As of July 27, 2020, the number of COVID-19 confirmed cases worldwide reached 16.3 million people, with 114,000 cases in Canada. About two to eight percent of COVID-19 cases experience severe symptoms that lead to respiratory distress, organ failure, and even death. Currently, regular medical checkups consist of one-on-one phone calls to monitor the patient’s vital signs remotely.

Semah Aissaoui’s journey with Mitacs began in summer 2018 as an undergraduate in Tunisia when he first came to Canada as a Globalink research intern. He progressed on to receive the Mitacs Globalink Graduate Fellowship and attend graduate school at Polytechnique Montréal in Canada with the award. He now works with Fluent.ai on a Mitacs Accelerate award, researching how to remove background noise and reverberation from sound signals to enhance the accuracy of offline voice-activated devices.