Fulbright Scholarship

David spent a year at the Dublin Institute of Technology in Ireland as a Fulbright scholar, working on a DSP tool to make the guitar easier to play for people with disabilities. Under the supervision of Dr. Ted Burke, David designed an algorithm that could work with a standard guitar tuned in an unconventional way, to separate the guitar strings in real-time, detecting the note onsets and re-tuning the strings. This made it so that the fretting hand could be replaced by predictive/generative note selection, and/or other simplified interfaces for people with physical disabilities.

David demonstrated a working prototype of this concept using an Analog Devices development kit with a simple electric guitar front-end.

David's work was covered by the Irish Independent, the Irish Fulbright Commission, in Case Western's Alumni Letter Opening Editorial, and in Case's News Blog.

The central concept behind David's Fulbright work was published in the Irish Signals and Systems Conference-- read the paper here.