Steven Livingstone
BSc, MSc, PhD

Background

My research is in affective data science, where I apply programming, statistics, and machine learning to understand emotion and its related disorders. I focus on developing techniques and technologies that can recognize, predict, and express emotion. Increasingly, my work focuses on data provisioning for machine learning, where I create massive data sets of emotion for use in deep learning applications (e.g., RAVDESS. For more information, please see my research page.

I have published over 70 peer-reviewed articles and presentations, and have been cited over 2400 times. My work has appeared in top-tier journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scientific Reports, and PLOS One. I'm the creator the RAVDESS, the de facto dataset used in speech emotion recognition. My work has garnered widespread media attention, with broadcast interviews in The Atlantic and NBC’s Today, features in CBC's Quirks and Quarks, and CIFAR research series, and on the front cover of Informatik Spektrum

I lead the Affective Data Science Lab (ADSL) here at Ontario Tech. We focus on developing techniques and technologies that can recognize, predict, and express emotion. We often work with physiological equipment that generate large amounts of data, including electromyography (EMG), electroencephalography (EEG), and motion capture.

Prospective students – I am currently accepting students at the undergraduate (honours) and graduate levels (MA/PhD). I also am looking for motivated undergraduates to gain experience as research assistants in my lab. Please email with inquiries, and we can discuss your research interests.