It would appear as though there aren’t many academic challenges Rebecca Bates can’t conquer.
She left last week for Sao Paulo, Brazil, where she’ll spend a year developing a Portuguese spoken- language interface for handheld devices that support public health- care workers in the field. But languages and software weren’t always her primary focus. The Minnesota State University faculty member started college as a bio-medical engineer major at Boston University — she wanted to be a doctor.
But after four years of science, she decided medicine wasn’t her thing. She opted to continue her education at Harvard Divinity School.
“That was really for me,” she said. “I wanted to go read.”
After that she obtained a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Boston University and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington.
“Along the way I had a lot of experiences that connected me to education and how people learn,” she said.
Bates, an expert on statistical modeling and pattern recognition for speech applications, will conduct her Fulbright research at the University of São Paulo from this August through May 2010.
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