Mounya Elhilali

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Mounya Elhilali is a leading figure in auditory neuroscience and computational modeling, whose work bridges the gap between biological hearing and artificial intelligence. Her research focuses on how the brain processes complex acoustic scenes—a field known as auditory scene analysis—and she has made foundational contributions to understanding how listeners segregate and attend to sounds in noisy environments. Elhilali’s most cited work, including a seminal 2001 paper on biorobotics (30 citations), critically examined the limitations of using robotic models to inform biology, arguing that such approaches have largely been a one-way street. This provocative statement helped reframe the dialogue between neuroscience and engineering. Her broader impact is reflected in her highly cited publications on neural encoding of natural sounds, temporal coherence in auditory perception, and computational models of attention. With thousands of citations across her career, Elhilali’s work has influenced both basic science—revealing how the brain extracts meaning from sound—and applied fields like hearing aids and speech recognition. She is also recognized for her leadership in promoting diversity in STEM and for her role in advancing interdisciplinary research at the intersection of systems neuroscience, signal processing, and machine learning.