About

Lee M. Miller is a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology, Physiology and Behavior at UC Davis, with additional affiliation in Otolaryngology. His research focuses on understanding the neural bases of auditory perception and speech recognition in human listeners. He investigates how different parts of the brain cooperate to achieve perception, especially in noisy environments, and what happens when comprehension fails. Using non-invasive techniques such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), high-density electroencephalography (EEG), and neural network analysis, his work aims to uncover the neural mechanisms underlying auditory perception and speech processing. His research addresses the challenges faced by individuals with hearing impairments, autism, learning impairments, and those using hearing aids or cochlear implants, with the goal of improving audiological diagnosis, hearing device design, speech recovery, listening strategies, and social integration. His work is supported by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), a division of the NIH. Miller holds a B.S. in Physics from Duke University and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California San Francisco/Berkeley. His contributions include advancing understanding of how brain circuits support auditory perception and developing potential solutions for hearing loss and communication disorders.

Research topics

• Cognitive science
• Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Cognitive psychology
• Atmospheric sciences
• Environmental science
• Thermodynamics
• Meteorology
• Speech recognition
• Physics
• Linguistics

Selected publications

• Toward disaster-resilient universities: A pre-COVID assessment of American institutions of higher education

  International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction · 2026-04-08

  articleOpen access

  This article investigates the state of resilience of academic institutions in the Southeastern United States prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on 50 expert interviews with campus emergency management professionals conducted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, this article advances three findings that contribute to the discourse on disaster-resilient universities. First, some academic institutions appear to have strengthened their emergency management capacities, the result of expanded leadership support, enhanced processes and procedures, clarified roles and responsibilities, increased preparedness and training activities, and investments in staff and resources. Second, academic institutions face unique emergency management challenges, driven by their competing priorities, dispersed and dynamic campus populations, and inconsistent buy-in from stakeholders. Third, academic institutions are not unified in their approaches to emergency management. They differ in how they structure the emergency management function and in their approaches to risk. These findings underscore the advances and ongoing complexities related to the strengthening of emergency management and resilience-building within higher education settings. They also suggest that sustained resilience-building requires integrating improvements to emergency management processes and procedures with institution-wide governance reforms that improve collaboration and increase stakeholder support for preparedness efforts. • Academic institutions expanded EM staffing, training, and planning pre-COVID-19. • Leadership and institutional buy-in are key to strengthening higher education resilience. • Emergency managers face unique challenges from dynamic and dispersed campus populations. • The EM functions of academic institutions vary in structure and approach. • Strategic planning and stakeholder engagement are vital for campus resilience.

  PublisherDOI

• Testing the Role of Temporal Attention in Speech: Pretarget Alpha Predicts Memory Encoding Rather Than Effects of Linguistic Focus

  Journal of Neuroscience · 2026-04-01

  article

  The rapid, continuous flow of speech often places strong demands on attention. Listeners are thought to meet these demands by using linguistic focus cues to predict when important information will occur and to allocate temporal attention accordingly. Yet, direct neural evidence for focus-driven modulations of preparatory attention is lacking. We address this gap by measuring EEG alpha power (8–13 Hz), an index of temporal attentional preparation ( N = 40; 26 females, 12 males, 2 nonbinary). Using an auditory question–answer paradigm, we tested whether pretarget alpha power tracks the temporal prioritization of focused words in the discourse. We found that pretarget alpha was comparable before focused and defocused words, inconsistent with the view that attention is temporally preallocated to discourse-relevant information. Instead, trial-by-trial fluctuations in pretarget alpha modulated a centroparietal ERP subsequent memory effect for focused words, linking preparatory attention to the depth of processing and memory encoding during comprehension. These findings constrain theories of attention in language, indicating that alpha-band activity primarily indexes an encoding-ready state that predicts subsequent memory rather than focus-driven temporal attentional preallocation.

  PublisherDOI

• Neural activation is enhanced with operational task ecological validity during complex cognitive tasks

  Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · 2026-05-21

  articleOpen access

  Introduction Extended exposure to a microgravity environment has been related to cognitive and neural decrements in astronauts, including changes in brain morphology and connectivity. Future long-duration exploration missions, such as those to Mars, will require the development of new countermeasures to counteract these decrements. Training in virtual reality (VR) has been identified as a promising potential countermeasure. Though there has been extensive research into VR as a tool for neurorehabilitation and microcognitive testing, little is understood about the neural effects of training in VR for operationally relevant tasks. Methods This research utilized functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) and electroencepholography (EEG) to measure neural activation during task completion in a VR environment with spaceflight-relevant tasks as compared to one with microcognitive corollary tasks. Results We find that a complex, operationally relevant VR environment elicits enhanced brain activation compared to the matching corollary tasks designed to target equivalent specific cognitive domains, for both EEG ( p < 0.0005) and fNIRS ( p < 0.001). Discussion These results indicate that brain activation and recruitment is increased when the task has higher ecological validity, providing an objective assessment to inform countermeasure development for spaceflight associated neural decrements.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Offshore lightning more active and intense in U.S. East Coast wind areas than in North Sea

  Environmental Research Communications · 2025-06-01 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Fast winds over open areas off the U.S. East Coast resulted in many offshore areas being opened for wind power deployment. Yet lightning is active in this same general area. Lightning damage has been noted as the leading cause of unplanned downtime of wind farms. Here we use lightning observations from 2020–2022 to quantify lightning activity—U.S. East Coast Wind Lease and Wind Planning areas received about 14-times the lightning strokes and about 18-times the energy transfer compared to the operational wind farms in the North Sea. A strong north-south U.S. gradient of lightning exists : low off the coast of Maine, growing higher off Chesapeake Bay, and high south of Virginia. Very high lightning activity also occurs about 250 km from the U.S. coastline, which is 50–100 km outside currently designated Wind Areas but likely relevant to planning floating wind farms further from shore. International lightning protection standards, such as IEC 614200-24, use lightning stroke density and turbine top-height to estimate damage to wind turbines, but it remains unclear if such standards could protect U.S. offshore wind turbines in active lightning areas where the turbine top-height can be 100 m taller than the next tallest object for tens to hundreds of kilometers. This analysis suggests U.S. East Coast offshore wind farms will be subjected to much higher lightning stroke and lightning energy densities than the North Sea counterparts. Preparing the turbine designs in anticipation of these more active U.S. lightning risks will help foster wind’s growing contribution to a reliable and resilient low-carbon energy future.

  PublisherDOI

• A database of upper limb surface electromyogram signals from demographically diverse individuals

  Scientific Data · 2025-03-27 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Upper limb based neuromuscular interfaces aim to provide a seamless way for humans to interact with technology. Among noninvasive interfaces, surface electromyogram (EMG) signals hold significant promise. However, their sensitivity to physiological and anatomical factors remains poorly understood, raising questions about how these factors influence gesture decoding across individuals or groups. To facilitate the study of signal distribution shifts across individuals or groups of individuals, we present a dataset of upper limb EMG signals and physiological measures from 91 demographically diverse adults. Participants were selected to represent a range of ages (18 to 92 years) and body mass indices (healthy, overweight, and obese). The dataset also includes measures such as skin hydration and elasticity, which may affect EMG signals. This dataset provides a basis to study demographic confounds in EMG signals and serves as a benchmark to test the development of fair and unbiased algorithms that enable accurate hand gesture decoding across demographically diverse subjects. Additionally, we validate the quality of the collected data using state-of-the-art gesture decoding techniques.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• An instantaneous voice-synthesis neuroprosthesis

  Nature · 2025-06-12 · 49 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Referee report. For: STRAIGHTMORPH: A Voice Morphing Tool for Research in Voice Communication Sciences [version 2; peer review: 4 approved, 1 approved with reservations]

  Faculty of 1000 Research Ltd · 2025-01-01

  peer-reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Characterization of HRRR-simulated rotor layer wind speeds and clouds along the coast of California

  Wind energy science · 2025-11-26

  articleOpen accessCorresponding

  Abstract. Stratocumulus clouds, with their low cloud base and top, affect the atmospheric boundary layer wind and turbulence profile, thereby modulating wind energy resources. GOES satellite data reveal an abundance of stratocumulus clouds in the late spring and summer months off the coast of northern and central California, where there are active plans to deploy floating offshore wind farms at two lease areas (near Morro Bay and Humboldt). Since the fall of 2020, two buoys equipped with multiple instruments, including Doppler lidar, have been deployed for about 1 year in these wind farm lease areas to assess the rotor layer wind conditions in these locations. The objective of this study is to evaluate how well the High-Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) model represents stratocumulus cloud characteristics and turbine-relevant rotor layer winds (surface to 300 m) by comparing HRRR simulations with buoy and satellite observations. We first find that the HRRR model reproduces the seasonal cycle of cloud top height reasonably well in these regions. However, during the warm season – especially at Morro Bay – the HRRR-simulated stratocumulus clouds tend to have lower tops by about 150 m and exhibit weaker diurnal cycles than satellite observations. Our analysis also shows that rotor layer wind speeds and vertical shear are stronger at Humboldt than at Morro Bay, and both are generally stronger under clear-sky conditions. Finally, the HRRR model bias in rotor layer wind speed is small under cloudy conditions but larger and dependent on observed wind speed under clear skies. Specifically, HRRR underestimates wind speeds at Morro Bay and overestimates them at Humboldt under clear-sky conditions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Non-invasive electromyographic speech neuroprosthesis: a geometric perspective

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2025-02-09

  preprintOpen accessSenior author

  We present a neuromuscular speech interface that translates silently voiced articulations directly into text. We record surface electromyographic (EMG) signals from multiple articulatory sites on the face and neck as participants silently articulate speech, enabling direct EMG-to-text translation. Such an interface has the potential to restore communication for individuals who have lost the ability to produce intelligible speech due to laryngectomy, neuromuscular disease, stroke, or trauma-induced damage (e.g., radiotherapy toxicity) to the speech articulators. Prior work has largely focused on mapping EMG collected during audible articulation to time-aligned audio targets or transferring these targets to silent EMG recordings, which inherently requires audio and limits applicability to patients who can no longer speak. In contrast, we propose an efficient representation of high-dimensional EMG signals and demonstrate direct sequence-to-sequence EMG-to-text conversion at the phonemic level without relying on time-aligned audio.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Supplementary material to "Characterization of HRRR simulated Rotor Layer Wind Speeds and Clouds along Coast of California"

  2025-06-27

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01DC008171

  NIH · $1.7M · 2013

Frequent coauthors

• Axel Kleidon

  36 shared

• Fabian Gans

  Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry

  18 shared

• Antoine J. Shahin

  University of California, Merced

  13 shared

• Christoph E. Schreiner

  University of California, San Francisco

  12 shared

• Christopher W. Bishop

  Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine

  11 shared

• Kristina C. Backer

  University of California, Merced

  10 shared

• David W. Keith

  University of Chicago

  9 shared

• Mark D’Esposito

  University of California, Berkeley

  9 shared

Awards & honors

• UC Davis STAIR Grant (2024)
• Department of Defense Grant for Diagnostic Tool Development…