Carnegie Mellon University
December 13, 2021

Shinn-Cunningham Among Winners of Misha Mahowald Prize

By Caroline Sheedy

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, director of the Neuroscience Institute and George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, is part of an interdisciplinary team that won the 2021 Misha Mahowald Prize for Neuromorphic Engineering.

This year the prize was shared by two teams of researchers. Shinn-Cunningham’s team used technology to find new ways to help hearing-impaired persons focus attention on individual speakers in a noisy environment, such as a cocktail party. 

Shinn-Cunningham’s team was led by Edmund Lalor and James O'Sullivan, and also included Alan Power, Nima Mesgarani, Siddharth Rajaram, John Foxe, Malcolm Slaney, and Shihab Shamma. The project grew out of the Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop, which brings together senior trainees and faculty each summer.