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Leslie M. Collins

Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Box 90291, Durham, NC 27708-0291
3461 CIEMAS, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Leslie M. Collins earned the BSEE degree from the University of Kentucky, and the MSEE, and PhD degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1986 through 1990 she was a Senior Engineer at Westinghouse Research and Development Center in Pittsburgh, PA. She joined Duke in 1995 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002 and to Professor in 2007. Her research interests include physics-based statistical signal processing, subsurface sensing, auditory prostheses and pattern recognition. She is a member of the Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies. Dr. Collins has been a member of the team formed to transition MURI-developed algorithms and hardware to the Army HSTAMIDS and GSTAMIDS landmine detection systems. She has been the principal investigator on research projects from ARO, NVESD, SERDP, ESTCP, NSF, and NIH. Dr. Collins was the PI on the DoD UXO Cleanup Project of the Year in 2000. As of 2015, Dr. Collins has graduated 15 PhD students.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering · 2007 - Present Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
Professor in the Department of Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences · 2021 - Present Head and Neck Surgery & Communication Sciences, Clinical Science Departments
Professor of Biomedical Engineering · 2024 - Present Biomedical Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering
Faculty Network Member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences · 2011 - Present Duke Institute for Brain Sciences, University Institutes and Centers

In the News


Published January 30, 2024
A Marriage of AI and Photonics to Advance Imaging, Health Care and Public Safety

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Recent Publications


Deep Learning Resolves Myovascular Dynamics in the Failing Human Heart.

Journal Article JACC Basic Transl Sci · May 2024 The adult mammalian heart harbors minute levels of cycling cardiomyocytes (CMs). Large numbers of images are needed to accurately quantify cycling events using microscopy-based methods. CardioCount is a new deep learning-based pipeline to rigorously score ... Full text Link to item Cite

Objective intelligibility measurement of reverberant vocoded speech for normal-hearing listeners: Towards facilitating the development of speech enhancement algorithms for cochlear implants.

Journal Article The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · March 2024 Cochlear implant (CI) recipients often struggle to understand speech in reverberant environments. Speech enhancement algorithms could restore speech perception for CI listeners by removing reverberant artifacts from the CI stimulation pattern. Listening st ... Full text Cite

Segment anything, from space?

Conference Proceedings - 2024 IEEE Winter Conference on Applications of Computer Vision, WACV 2024 · January 3, 2024 Recently, the first foundation model developed specifically for image segmentation tasks was developed, termed the "Segment Anything Model"(SAM). SAM can segment objects in input imagery based on cheap input prompts, such as one (or more) points, a boundin ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


BREEZE: New Ventricular Direct Cooling Stylet to Mitigate Secondary Brain Injury

ResearchCo Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2022 - 2025

InstaJam: every airman a sensor - jamming classification, localization, and visualization

ResearchCo-Principal Investigator · Awarded by InstaJam, LLC · 2023 - 2025

Leveraging Natural Language Processing for Reverberant Speech Enhancement in Cochlear Implants

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Institutes of Health · 2023 - 2025

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Education, Training & Certifications


University of Michigan, Ann Arbor · 1995 Ph.D.
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor · 1986 M.Sc.Eng.
University of Kentucky · 1985 B.S.E.