CAREER: Landmark-Based Speech Recognition in Music and Speech Backgrounds

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This is a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award. The research will develop speech recognition and auditory scene analysis models that are probability distributions whose parameters can be trained from data and whose internal structures are capable of abstracting the perceptual response patterns of human listeners. Two broad research questions will be explored: (1) Can probability models representing the pitch, envelope, and timing of an acoustic source be computed and integrated in a tractable manner? (2) What are the theoretical and empirical requirements for the partitioning, training, and recognition scoring of probability models for landmark-based acoustic features? Landmarks in speech are identifiable points in the flow of sound over time, such as consonant releases and closures, vowel centers, and glide extrema. The educational component of this project includes significant curriculum development at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and a strong investment in the mentoring of undergraduate and graduate research trainees.This CAREER award recognizes and supports the early career-development activities of a teacher-scholar who is likely to become an academic leader of the twenty-first century. This is fundamental scientific research in acoustics and computer science, but it addresses the very practical problem that computers are still far worse at recognizing speech than human beings are. Speech recognition technology has already become an important industry, but it will become far more important in the future as mobile computing and computer-mediated communications make it necessary for millions of people to control machines verbally rather than by means of keyboards. The educational component of this work will train graduate students to be teachers and communicators, as well as researchers, thus preparing them to help build the base of personnel needed in this exciting, growing area.