My name is Ehsan, pronounced /eh sa:n/ in IPA and written as احسان in Persian/Farsi. It is often mispronounced as [i:za:n] and misspelled as Eshan. A helpful cue is to think of it as “eh + sun,” with the emphasis on “sun.” I was born and raised in Tehran, Iran, and have lived in Ardebil, Tabriz, and again in Tehran before moving to Ghent, Belgium, in 2017. Tehran, my beloved hometown, is where I feel at home. Persian is my mother tongue, and I speak Azerbaijani Turkish fluently and understand Kurdish.
There’s no denying my inclination is more theoretical than applied. I work on electrophysiological signal processing, focusing on electroencephalography (EEG) and brain oscillations. My background is rooted in time series analysis, applied linear algebra, and machine learning. I am also interested in how signal processing connects with auditory neuroscience and cognition. I’m currently a postdoctoral fellow in AI for electrophysiology. Previously, I’ve worked in EEG and speech signal processing during my PhD and postdoctoral research, and I have solid experience in neuroimaging data analysis, particularly fMRI. Earlier in my career, I worked as an industrial image processing engineer in the medical and biometric fields. My CV is available [here].
When I am not working on signal processing, I spend time reading philosophy, theoretical physics, and mathematics. I always have music playing in the background. This is the playlist I listened to during my PhD at UGent: Something is dancing in my brain. Here are two more playlists I created after completing my PhD: Mr.Fox and Under shower with open eyes.
Experience
- Cur. PostDoc fellow in signal processing for electrophysiology
- Prev. PostDoc researcher in medical image processing @ ULB, BEAMS
- Prev. PostDoc researcher in EEG signal processing @ UGent/imec, WAVES
- Prev. PhD researcher in EEG signal processing @ UGent/imec, WAVES
- Prev. Researcher in signal processing and applied linear algebra @ Tehran University
- Prev. Image processing engineer (segmentation) @ NRP company
- Prev. Image processing engineer (biometrics) @ Matiran company
- Prev. Image processing engineer (biometrics) @ Sciences Green/SGI company
Education
- PhD in biomedical engineering/signal processing @ Ghent University, Belgium
- MSc in biomedical engineering/neuroimaging @ Tehran University, Iran
- BSc in electrical/biomedical engineering @ Sahand University of Technology, Iran
Into
- I’m into theory and understanding how systems work.
- I like reading about philosophy.
- Dostoevsky’s books stay with me, and I keep revisiting them.
- Music is always around me.
My PhD research
My PhD research uncovered two key findings. First, distinct brain oscillations correlate with attentional engagement during speech perception, as reflected in their frequency-specific features. Second, I developed a method to quantify attentional engagement during speech listening by tracking the evolving complexity of EEG signals over time. My dissertation, Exploring neural markers modulated by learning from speech in environmental noise using single-trial EEG (Ghent University, 2022), is available here, [PDF].
For further reading, see the following publications:
[1] Eqlimi, E., Bockstael, A., De Coensel, B., Schönwiesner, M., Talsma, D., & Botteldooren, D. (2023). Time course of EEG complexity reflects attentional engagement during listening to speech in noise. European Journal of Neuroscience. [PDF]
[2] Eqlimi, E., Bockstael, A., De Coensel, B., Schönwiesner, M., Talsma, D., & Botteldooren, D. (2020). EEG correlates of learning from speech presented in environmental noise. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1850. [PDF]
[3] De Groote, E., Eqlimi, E., Bockstael, A., Botteldooren, D., Santens, P., & De Letter, M. (2021). Parkinson’s disease affects the neural alpha oscillations associated with speech-in-noise processing. European Journal of Neuroscience, 54(9), 7355–7376. [PDF]
[4] Eqlimi, E., Botteldooren, D., Bockstael, A. Evaluating potential EEG-indicators for auditory attention to speech in realistic environmental noise, in 23rd International Congress on Acoustics (ICA), Aachen, Germany, 2019. [PDF]