Harriet Fell

Professor Emeritus

  • PhD in Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Harriet Fell designs and develops software to aid people with disabilities. Her work involves user interface design and signal processing for speech analysis as well as testing with everyone from babies to adults.

Fell developed the Baby Babble Blanket, an interface for infants with severe motor disabilities; the Early Vocalization Analyzer, which automatically analyzes digitized recordings of infant vocalizations; and visiBabble, which provides real-time visual reinforcement of infant vocalizations for deaf or hearing-impaired infants. She also works on automatic detection of emotion in adult speech.

Fell joined Northeastern’s Mathematics Department in 1971 and played an instrumental role in establishing the Khoury College of Computer Sciences in 1982, despite having no formal training in computer science. Bringing her passion for drawing and painting to her computer science work, Harriet also developed graphics courses and built up the Khoury graphics program. The courses were popular with students who were also looking for an opportunity to unite their artistic and computer science interests.

Although Harriet officially retired in 2015, she continued to write and collaborate with graduate students.