Biography

In fall 2019, Michael O’Leary began the pursuit of his PhD in Rehabilitation Sciences under the mentorship of Professor Katya Hill in the Communication Sciences and Disorders department. Researching and developing new Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) technologies and analyzing performance measurements is what attracted him to Pitt to pursue his PhD. Throughout the course of his PhD, he has worked on an NIH STTR grant to develop a brain-computer interface access method for a commercial AAC system. This exciting work will be a first of its kind product for the AAC field, allowing those with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or other locked-in disorders to communicate using only their brainwaves. This experience has taught O’Leary many valuable research and technical skills. For his dissertation he is studying a method to automatically evaluate and quantify the selection rate of an AAC user to determine the most appropriate AAC access method. This will ease the evaluation process and provide more data to clinicians to enhance their AAC access recommendations. After completing his PhD, he hopes to pursue more brain-computer interface research and development opportunities as he finds the product development aspect an exciting space to see hard work come to fruition for the end user.