Supervised by Dr. Tsoi, the project "Mynah: An Assistive Tool for the Speech Impaired" done by CPEG students Umakant Datt BHATT, Aayush SHRESTHA and Ka Hong SUNG is awarded President's Cup Gold Award this year.

Their project, Mynah, is a system designed for the speech impaired that can automatically produce a speaking head model video using text and short video in an effective and affordable way. It takes short samples of speech (10 sentences), which could be theirs (if less impaired) or anyone close to them (if severely impaired), to train a custom voice model and a picture whose face the user wants to model initially as a one-off input. After both the inputs are collected, the users will only be required to select the model and type a text script to generate talking head model videos. While Mynah operates as a mobile application which can be accessed anywhere without requiring external assistance, it is more convenient and financially affordable for the speech impaired. 

For more details, please refer to the President's Cup announcement and the project video.