About Me
Hi, I'm Cameron Churchwell, a second year PhD student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign working with Paris Smaragdis and Minje Kim!
I've been programming since fifth grade when I discovered the ComputerCraft mod for Minecraft.
Now I'm doing research in machine learning for audio applications, with a current focus on learned DSP filters and neural audio codecs.
In my free time I work on ridiculous and (sometimes) useful side projects, play trombone (currently looking for groups), read, and play games with my friends.
If you're on desktop, you should see a fun optical illusion I've animated as you scroll down this page!
Research
My primary research interest is improving the compute efficiency of audio machine learning via DSP-inspired techniques. This includes my recent WASPAA publication on learned comb filters as a replacement for time-frequency transforms. I'm also interested in low level optimizations such as novel GPU kernels and more efficient data processing and pipelines.
My prior work also includes a focus on neural speech editing and pronunciation encoding, and I hope to one day develop tools to help people with speech disorders.
Publications
* indicates equal contributions
- C. Churchwell, M. Kim, and P. Smaragdis. "Combolutional Neural Networks," WASPAA, October 2025.
- C. Churchwell*, M. Morrison*, and B. Pardo, "High-Fidelity Neural Phonetic Posteriorgrams," ICASSP 2024 Workshop on Explainable Machine Learning for Speech and Audio, April 2024.
- M. Morrison, C. Churchwell, N. Pruyne, and B. Pardo, "Fine-Grained and Interpretable Neural Speech Editing," Interspeech, September 2024.
Work/Teaching Experiences
- Internships
- Audio Machine Learning Research Intern, Bose (Summer 2025)
- Teaching
- Teaching Assistant, CS449 Deep Learning (Winter 2023)
- Teaching Assistant, CS449 Deep Learning (Spring 2023)
- Teaching Assistant, CS449 Deep Learning (Fall 2023)
- Teaching Assistant, CS449 Deep Learning (Spring 2024)
- Music
- Stipend Band (2022-2023)
Extracurricular Activities
- Music
- Northwestern University Concert Band (x6 quarters)
- Northwestern University Marching Band (NUMB) (2022-present)
- Northwestern University Stipend Band (2022-2023)
- Northwestern Univserity Basketball Band (2022-present)
- SAI Jazz Band (x1 quarter)
- Technical
- Slivka Residential College Of Science and Engineering Website Chair (2021-2023)
Honors
- 2023 Northwestern University Computer Science Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship ($6,500)
- 2023 Outstanding Peer Mentor for Deep Learning course ($300)
- 2024 Graduated Magna Cum Laude from Northwestern University