Busso began working on the area of affective computing with a focus on speech and facial analysis in 2003. At that time, it was uncommon to work on affective computing and the dependencies between speech and facial expressions. “At that time, there were very few research groups working on computational models to understand, recognize and synthesize emotions,” Busso said. “I am thankful for my students here at UT Dallas,” Busso said. Accolades is an occasional News Center feature that highlights recent accomplishments of The University of Texas at Dallas faculty, students and staff.