Talk
Abstract:
Toward Quantitative Models of Human Speech Perception and Production
Mechanisms
Abeer Alwan
Assoc.
Prof., Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Vice Chair, Biomedical Engineering IDP
The Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science
UCLA
alwan@icsl.icsl.ucla.edu
http://www.icsl.ucla.edu/~spapl
Our
research objectives are to develop mathematical models of human
speech perception and speech production mechanisms. Such models
provide insights into human cognitive abilities and are critical
to the advancement of bioengineering technology to assist speech
and hearing-impaired individuals, and to the development of effective
man-machine interfaces. In this talk, we will highlight the mathematical
challenges involved in these modeling tasks and provide examples.
On the perception side, we will discuss recent work that involves
models of the unique human capacity for perceiving speech in noise.
On the production side, we will discuss first-order models of
sound generation based on realistic geometries of the human vocal
tract which were derived from Magnetic Resonance Images.
Biographical
Sketch:
Abeer Alwan received her
Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1992. Since then,
she has been with the Electrical Engineering Department at UCLA
as an Assistant Professor (1992-1996) and Associate Professor
(1996-present). Dr. Alwan established and directs the Speech
Processing and Auditory Perception Laboratory at UCLA. Her research
interests include modeling human speech production and perception
mechanisms and applying these models to speech-processing applications
such as automatic recognition, compression, and synthesis. She
is the recipient of the NSF Research Initiation Award (1993),
the NIH FIRST Career Development Award (1994), the UCLA-TRW
Excellence in Teaching Award (1994), the NSF Career Development
Award (1995), and the Okawa Foundation Award in Telecommunications
(1997). Dr. Alwan is an elected member of Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma
Xi, Tau Beta Pi, the New York Academy of Sciences, and the IEEE
Signal Processing Technical Committees on Audio and Electroacoustics
and on Speech Processing. She served, as an elected member,
on the Acoustical Society of America Technical Committee on
Speech Communication from 1993 to 1999. She is an editor-in-chief
of the International Journal Speech Communication.
Mathematical
Foundations of Speech Processing and Recognition
2000-2001
Program: Mathematics in Multimedia
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