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Expert in Usability of Voice Interfaces, Usability Engineering, Computer Speech Recognition, Speaker ID
Available for your Consulting and Expert Witness Needs
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Summary of Expertise:
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Listed with other top experts in: |
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HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERFACE DESIGN; USER INTERFACE. Based on literature and experiments in cognitive science, human-computer interfacing, and practical use of graphical user interfaces, mouse and voice input systems, Expert has defined guidelines for user-friendly interfacing. Such techniques have been applied in design of voice input systems, multi-media systems, display systems, and error-correcting strategies for problem solving with computers. Expert has led dozens of projects to design user-satisfying voice dialogs for Interactive Voice Response systems (IVR's) in healthcare, plus dialogs for handheld devices, entertainment systems, and vehicle interfaces. COMPUTER SPEECH RECOGNITION; VOICE RECOGNITION. Expert has devoted most of his career to developing, applying, and evaluating algorithms and products that recognize spoken words, phrases, sentences, and discourses. His distinctive design of spoken sentence understanding has been based on knowledge-based "prosodically-guided speech understanding," using intonation, timing, stress patterns to detect syntactic and semantic structures, and phonetic analysis for word identification. VOICE INPUT DEVICE. Expert has defined seven cardinal principles for ensuring user-friendly voice interfacing. He has exploited over 150 detailed rules that help ensure that details of the interaction and equipment meet those cardinal principles. Based on 20 years of published applications of speech recognition plus principles of human-computer interfacing and cognitive science, designers can now select tasks for voice I/O, configure language and environmental conditions, and apply the best devices to ensure accurate and user-satisfying ways of solving tasks with voice. SPEECH RECOGNITION DUE DILIGENCE. Expert has conducted due diligence analysis of new ventures and established vendors of speech recognition equipment for investors, venture groups, large companies seeking partnerships, and OEM/VAR companies. He has assessed market segments, competitors, patent potential, and business and marketing plans. He has also designed tests for assessing alternative recognition techniques or devices. LINGUISTIC STRUCTURAL PROSODIC CUE. Expert has shown that the acoustic pitch of the voice dips between major syntactic phrases to permit detection of phrase structures. He has also found that timing and rhythm cues help disambiguate sentence structures, stressed syllables occur in important words, and cue sentence types and phrase categories provide regions of reliably-detected phonetic structures. These cues can help parse sentences, detect key words and concepts, and show semantics. Speech recognizers are able to do more reliable human-like recognition. VOICE INTERFACE USER ADVISORY TOOL. Expert directed the first use of speech recognition for automated telephone operator services and designed and implemented several other applications of voice input for PC software, office automation, control of robots, vocal entry of medical patient information, etc. Advisory software has been devised to assist users in selecting tasks which benefit from voice, best devices for each job, good vocabularies and discourses, and methods for assessing adequacy of voice interfaces, etc. STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLANNING DEVELOPMENT. Expert has written successful business plans for several telecommunications, voice recognition, and medical companies and guided the early stages of new business ventures. This experience plus study of business planning literature has been used by companies needing to seek funding, investors seeking assessment of possible ventures, and firms developing strategic alliances.
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Expert has a distinctive method for relating phonetic details to the underlying phonemic content in spoken English. While many engineers and speech scientists view phonetic contrasts or allophones as simply alternative articulatory versions of phonemes, for which they form members of a phoneme set, Expert uses a systematic phonological model that uses semantic, syntactic, prosodic, and phonotactic context to define the phonetic form of a phoneme in any linguistic form. Stress and other prosodic characteristics form critical parts of the "context" for each phoneme.
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Expert has conducted or supervised experiments on planned or deployed voice, video, manual, and screen interfaces. He has participated in the design and testing of alternative dialog structures and wording for various clients. He has defined the experimental conditions for usability testing, interviewed or briefed subjects, defined measures of interface adequacy, and interpreted improvements from new designs. Early in his career, he directed research on the relative value of voice versus keyboarding or manual interfaces, and documented the distinct advantages of voice interactions.
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Show Secondary and Basic Areas of Expertise | Localities:
Expert may consult nationally and internationally, and is also local to the following cities: Minneapolis, Minnesota;
Saint Paul, Minnesota;
Rochester, Minnesota;
Burnsville, Minnesota;
Saint Cloud, Minnesota;
Eden Prairie, Minnesota;
Minnetonka, Minnesota;
and Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
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Degree |
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Subject |
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Institution |
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Honors |
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1972
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Ph.D.
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Interdepartmental (Electrical Engineering, English, Audiology, and Speech Science)
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Purdue University
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E.E.
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Electrical Engineering
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M.I.T.
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S.M.
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Interdisciplinary (Linguistics Emphasis)
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M.I.T.
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M.S.
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Electrical Engineering
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Montana State College
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B.S.
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Electrical Engineering
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Montana State College
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Top engineer (1/196)
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Employer |
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Department |
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Title |
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Responsibilities |
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2005 to
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(Undisclosed University)
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School of Business and Information Technology
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Adjunct Professor
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Teaches PhD level courses in Research in Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, and Seminars in E-Business and IS Research.
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2000 to
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(Undisclosed University)
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Graduate Programs in Software Engineering
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Adjunct Professor
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Expert teaches "Speech Recognition and Voice Interfacing" and "Developing Voice Interfaces."
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1980 to
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(Undisclosed)
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President
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Directs the consulting, publications, and teaching programs of the Institute. Conducts research and development on voice interfaces and voice interactive web. Teaches corporate short courses.
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2006 to 2008
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United Healthcare
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United Voice Portal
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Director of VUI Design, and Expertd Architect of VUI Design
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Expert directed the team of VUI designers, and coordinated the internal and contracted work on over 100 projects, including simplification of the automated self service for consumers and healthcare professionals. Results included reducing the average call length by 22 seconds, saving the corporation over $2 million per year, and increasing caller satisfaction from 69% to 91%. He defined the usability engineering strategy, the details of user and task analysis, the high level and detailed design processes, WOZ and user testing, coaching and recording, testing and tuning, and user satisfaction surveys. He defined measures of interface adequacy, including cognitive load on the caller. He and the team simplified caller access to trained healthcare customer care professionals.
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1987 to 1987
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NYNEX Science & Technology
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Speech Group, A.I. Lab.
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Acting Manager
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Expert directed the speech group as it developed the first successful telephony application of continuous speech recognition for operator services.
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1983 to 1984
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Voice Control Systems, Inc.
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Center for Speech Science & Education
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Senior Vice President
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He directed the long-range research branch of the Dallas firm, until funding limits reduced corporate staffing. He designed human-like speech recognition algorithms, measures of adequacy of voice interfaces, and models of human speech perception.
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1978 to 1984
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U.S.C.
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Department of Linguistics
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Adjunct Associate Professor
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He taught phonetics, prosodics, speech perception, machines that understand speech, speech processing, etc. He was one of three developers of Ph.D. and M.S. curricula.
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1981 to 1982
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University of California, Santa Barbara
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Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
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Adjunct Associate Professor
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He taught speech recognition, and directed an NSF grant on Intonational Cues to Syntactic Structure.
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Associations/Societies
Expert is or has been a member of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the Acoustical Society of America, the American Voice Input-Output Society (and former editor of its journal), IEEE (sr. Member), the Minnesota Computer Industry Coalition, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, Minnesota MIT Alumni Club, and the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
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Professional Appointments
He is a Senior Member of IEEE and former Chairman at the Academy for Forensic Applications of Communication Sciences. He has chaired international conferences, given keynote addresses at Voice '90, '91, '92, '94, AVIOS, and SpeechTek, and other professional conferences, and has been invited to provide tutorials on speech technology at conferences such as Voice '90, Speech Tech '92, AVIOS '95, Telephone Voice Interfacing 2001, Korean Association of Speech Science, SpeechTek, and corporate or governmental panels on voice interfacing.
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Awards/Recognition
Expert is listed in Who's Who Worldwide, Who's Who in the West, Oxford Who's Who, American Men and Women of Science, Men of Achievement, and the Directory of Distinguished Americans. He was awarded Best Paper of Show by the Applied Voice Input/Output Society, EDN Magazine, and other writing awards, and was recognized for outstanding achievements in education, corporate executive groups, and consulting agencies.
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Publications and Patents Summary
He is the author of over 100 publications, including seven books, many book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, consulting reports, and voice website seminars.
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Selected Publications and Publishers
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- Prentice-Hall
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- Speech Science Publications
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- IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
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| Government Experience: |
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Agency |
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Role |
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Description |
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1959 to 1964
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Montana State College
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Project Expertder
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Expert directed research and development projects on lightning direction finding, meteor propagation, transceiver designs, and electronic instrumentation.
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1970 to 1972
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Purdue Research Foundation
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Graduate Instructor in Research
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He conducted research on prosodic cues to linguistic structures, and did other research efforts on word spotting and continuous speech recognition. He taught Introduction to Electrical Engineering, Instrument Lab, and parts of Automata Theory.
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1966 to 1970
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NASA Electronics Research Laboratory
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Mathematician & Project Expertder
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Expert funded (sponsored research and development projects at) MIT, BBN, the University of Illinois, and Johns Hopkins University on the value of speech recognition, voice interfacing, computational complexity. He also designed a parameter evaluation system for recognition.
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1995 to 2002
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Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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Consultant on EM sensors
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Expertd expert in speech technology, conducted research on electrmagnetic sensors that monitor human articulation during speech production.
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| Selected Consulting Examples: |
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Assisted Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in development, testing, and application of electromagneitc sensors for monitoring human articulation of speech. Applied such non-acoustic sensors to enhance speech recognition, speech synthesis, and speaker recognition.
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Designed and implemented an advanced prosodically-guided speech understanding algorithm, for a European company. Supervised the design team in America, and assisted in studies of automotive markets for voice interfacing, competitive analysis, and venture capital due diligence studies.
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Conducted market research and OEM-customer surveys, to determine international interest in embedded speech recognition, speech synthesis, speaker recognition, and other integrated speech technologies. Work done for a leading vendor of speech recognition products.
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Strategic planning, market research, surveys of professional drivers, and design of user-satisfying voice and touchscreen interfaces for trucks, automobiles, and other mobile systems. Designed the screen layouts and interface dialogs for truck driver interface. Explored markets for voice in the wide array of company products.
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Managed a team of telephony interface developers, at a leading telephone company, and integrated speech recognition and voice response for the first successful telephony interface using continuous speech recognition. Directed MIT research on expert systems for speech recognition.
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Recent Client Requests:
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Expert in Speech and Voice.
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Expert in voice interface for consulting on voice interaction.
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Voice recognition expert for consulting on voice recognition applications and developments.
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Click the green button above to contact
Expert for a free initial screening call regarding your expert consulting needs.
Expert is available for consulting to corporate, legal and government clients.
Remember, your initial screening call to speak with
Expert is free.
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Expert Witness Experience Summary:
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Expert was, for 5 years, Chairman of the Academy for Forensic Applications of Communication Sciences, and a member of the American Forensic Society. He edited technical and forensic articles on speech processing for forensic phonetics work. Expert assisted in legal actions regarding speech recognition and the ADA rights of employees. Expert conducted patent searches, and helped write several patents.
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Recent Litigation Client Requests:
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Voice recognition software expert for consulting on voice recognition technology.
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Expert in voice recognition.
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Expert in with testifying experience.
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Voice Recognition expert for consulting on Voice Identification.
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Voice recognition expert to provide consulting services for the benefit of the Abu Dhabi Judicial Department.
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Voice recognition expert for consulting on comparison of two voice recordings.
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Expert in voice recognition for a criminal case.
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Click the green button above to contact
Expert for a free initial screening call regarding expert testimony,
litigation consulting and support, forensic services, or any related expert witness services.
A few litigation needs include product liability, personal injury, economic loss, intellectual property
(patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright), and insurance matters. Remember, your initial screening
call to speak with
Expert is free.
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| International Experience: |
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Country / Region |
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Summary |
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2001 to 2003
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Germany
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Reviewed the company algorithms for speech recognition, for the investors. Conducted a series of market studies for automotive and mobile use of speech recognition. Developed advanced feature extraction and word recognition algorithms, which augmented standard HMM methods.
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1981 to 1983
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NATO (primarily France)
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Outlined methods for selecting, evaluating, and enhancing speech recognizers. Described and advocated prosodic aids to speech recognition. Edited publications from European authors.
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1986 to 1986
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Ireland
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Assisted in design of speech recognition capabilities for PC keyboards and other devices, in which speech interfacing was an embedded supplement to traditional PC interfaces.
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1987 to 1988
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Australia
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Assessment of markets, competitors, technology products, and specific algorithms for speech output from hand-portsble devices, with capabilities in several Australian language cvommunities.
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2002 to 2002
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Korea
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Proposed, developed, and reported on advanced algorithms for detecting prosodic features such as syllabic nuclei, stressed syllables, intonational phrase boundaries, liguistic pauses, and rhythm breaks. Outlined prosodic assistance to detection of phonemic structures.
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| Foreign Language |
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Description |
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German
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Limited ability to read, speak, and write German, especially focused on techniical communications.
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Expert conducted a long series of market research studies, and assisted in the design and fulfillment of several corporate studies of markets, user needs and preferences, interface dialog designs, and competition studies. Expert teaches courses on research in markets, product design, industry assessment, future trends, etc. He provided speech technology and voice interfacing expertise for Lawrence Livermore National Labs work on multi-sensor inputs to speech systems.
Click the green button above to contact
Expert for a free initial screening call regarding your marketing research, industry research, and company
research needs. For research needs involving multiple experts or secondary research,
a Research Director can be assigned to coordinate the work into a custom report for you as a potentially quicker
and more cost effective alternative to doing this work yourself or hiring a boutique consultancy.
Remember, your initial screening call to speak with
Expert is free.
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| Additional Skills and Services: |
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Training/Seminars
Expert has taught over 6000 corporate, government, and academic leaders in speech technology and usability engineering of voice interfaces. He organized, logistically coordinated, and taught over 45 short courses in cities throughout America, Europe, and Asia. Expert also taught seminars, tutorials, and short courses onsite at corporations, government agencies, and for international conferences.
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Supplier and Vendor Location and Selection Expert has experience locating vendors of speech recognizers, voice software, speech synthesizers, and voice mail systems, and did contracted reviews of alternative vendors for AT&T, Eaton, IBM, Compaq, Sharp, and other production groups. He knows many of the leading researchers, corporate leaders, user experience designers, and other speech technology experts throughout the USA and some other countries.
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Other Skills and Services
Expert has been commissioned to conduct due diligence studies for a number of new ventures, and guided Fortune 100 companies in the investment of millions of dollars in speech technology and voice interfacing. He also conducted usability inspections of many voice dialogs, and designed simplifications and other usability improvements for IVR systems, call centers, design of handheld and home information systems, and user interfaces in automobiles, trucks, and aviation.
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Education
