The Taub Faculty of Computer Science Events and Talks

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a progressive, degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. It is characterized by significant motor symptom, such as: tremor, slowness of movement, and gait deficiencies; but also entails non-motor symptoms, such as: depression, cognitive slowness and sleep difficulties. Intel Corporation is running a joint project with the Michael J. Fox foundation for Parkinson’s research, to promote research on PD, as well as patients’ daily care. As part of this project, sensory data from wearable devices is collected through a massive health-IoT platform that was developed by Intel. The sensorial data is then analyzed with Machine Learning and Digital Signal Processing algorithms, and objective Parkinsonian measures are extracted. In this talk we will introduce the promise as well as the algorithmic challenges on the way for enabling breakthroughs in PD through the usage of wearable devices and big data analytics.

Short bio:
Shahar Cohen is a data scientist and product visionary and strategist at Intel. Currently, he helps in building a vision for the Intel and Michael J. Fox Foundation joint venture for enabling breakthroughs in research on Parkinson’s disease through big data analytics; and developing algorithms to support and materialize that vision. Before joining Intel, Shahar gathered entrepreneurship experience as a co-founder and CTO of Optimove.com, a customer retention automation platform. He has also served as a machine learning and product consultant to several Israeli startups. Shahar has over 15 years of experience in machine learning, data mining, and decision support systems, as a hands-on algorithms developer as well as entrepreneur and strategist.