I am currently a PhD student in the NLPnorth research unit within the Computer Science Department at the IT University of Copenhagen advised by Dr. Natalie Schluter and also a Student Researcher in Machine Learning Research at Apple. Presently, I am working as a Visiting Researcher at Columbia University in the Spoken Language Processing Group.
My research interest covers the field of Speech and Language Processing for low resource languages, with an interest in African Languages.
In Speech Processing, I am currently exploring how suprasegmental data in speech can be efficiently extracted and applied to improve natural language systems.
I received my B.S. summa cum laude in Computer Science from Ashesi University and my M.S. in Computer Science from the IT University of Copenhagen.
OTHER INTERESTS OUTSIDE OF RESEARCH:
Outside of research I love to read books and practice martial arts(Shotokan karate and Brazilian jiu-jitsu).
Akan Cinematic Emotions (ACE): A Multimodal Multi-party Dataset for Emotion Recognition in Movie Dialogues
David Sasu*, Zehui Wu, Ziwei Gong, Run Chen, Pengyuan Shi, Lin Ai, Julia Hirschberg, Natalie Schluter
In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2025)
Prosody Detection Improves Pretrained Automatic Speech Recognition
David Sasu*, Natalie Schluter
In the Proceedings of Interspeech (INTERSPEECH 2025)
Enhancing Speech Instruction Understanding and Disambiguation in Robotics via Speech Prosody
David Sasu*, Kweku Yamoah, Benedict Quartey, Natalie Schluter, George Konadaris
In the Proceedings of Interspeech (INTERSPEECH 2025)
Learning More with Less: Self-Supervised Approaches for Low-Resource Speech Emotion Recognition
Ziwei Gong, Pengyuan Shi, Kaan Donbekci, Lin Ai, Run Chen, David Sasu, Zehui Wu, Julia Hirschberg
In the Proceedings of Interspeech (INTERSPEECH 2025)
Does Context Matter? A Prosodic Comparison of English and Spanish in Monolingual and Multilingual Discourse Settings
Debasmita Bhattacharya*, David Sasu*, Michela Marchini, Natalie Schluter, Julia Hirschberg
Under review
M.Sc thesis: Multi-lingual and Cross-lingual Automatic Prosodic Annotation
Grade: 12/12
B.Sc thesis: A Functional NLP Speech System For Akan Using Limited Data
Grade: A+
Student Excellence Award - Ashesi University
The award is presented to a student who exemplifies academic excellence, creates major impact in uplifting the image of Ashesi by example and contributes immensely towards supporting fellow students.Innovation Award - Ashesi University
The award is presented to a student who uses his knowledge in technology to improve the lives of others and create a major societal impact.Presidential Award for Scholarship, Leadership & Citizenship - Ashesi University
This is the highest award a student can receive at Ashesi. It is awarded and presented each year by the President of the University to a student who has contributed in outstanding ways to Ashesi’s mission.Nominated for Best Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award - Ashesi University
This award is presented to a teaching assistant that demonstrates unusual dedication to teaching and consistently goes above and beyond the call of duty.Chairman's Award - International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition
The award is the highest award given at the IGEM competition. It is presented to recognize “integrity, good sportsmanship, respect, honesty, celebration, co-operation, effort and excellence”.Silver Medal Award - International Genetically Engineered Machine Competition
This is a merit award given to reflect the stellar performance demonstrated at the IGEM competition.Millennium Fellowship - United Nations
The Millennium Fellowship is a prestigious fellowship that provides fellows with world class training, connections and recognition to boost their social impact efforts.African Future Leader Fellowship - African Change Makers
The African Future Leader Fellowship is a prestigious fellowship that equips young and gifted Africans to become future African leaders.From Strength To Strength by Arthur C. Brooks
Favourite choice: Livewired by David Eagleman
Favourite choice: Man's search for meaning by Victor Frankl
Favourite choice: Becoming by Michelle Obama