Data Citizens Distinguished Lecture Series presents Dr. John Hansen 11/2

Join us for a “Data Citizens: A Distinguished Lecture Series” talk on big data naturalistic audio processing by John H. L. Hansen, Ph.D., Associate Dean for Research at the Center for Robust Speech Systems at the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas (CRSS-UTDallas).

Dr. Hansen is also a Distinguished University Endowed Chair in Telecommunications Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering, and a Speech and Hearing Professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

Register Now | Wednesday 11/2, 4:00-5:00 PM

University of Miami, Richter Library, Conference Room 343 (Third Floor)
1300 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146

Directions + Parking

TALK TITLE:  “Challenges and Advancements in Speaker Diarization & Recognition for Naturalistic Data Streams”

Abstract

Speech communications represents a core domain for education, team problem solving, social engagement, and business interactions. The ability for Speech Technology to extract layers of knowledge and assess engagement content represents the next generation of advanced speech solutions.

Today, the emergence of BIG DATA, Machine Learning, as well as voice-enabled speech systems have required the need for effective voice capture and automatic speech/speaker recognition. The ability to employ speech and language technology to assess human-to-human interactions offers new research paradigms having profound impact on assessing human interaction.

In this talk, Dr. Hansen will focus on big data naturalistic audio processing relating to (i) child learning spaces, and (ii) the NASA APOLLO lunar missions. ML based technology advancements include automatic audio diarization, speech recognition, and speaker recognition. Child-Teacher based assessment of conversational interactions are explored, including keyword and “WH-word” (e.g., who, what, etc.). Diarization processing solutions are applied to both classroom/learning space child speech, as well as massive APOLLO data.

CRSS-UTDallas is expanding their original Apollo-11 corpus, resulting in a massive multi-track audio processing challenge to make available 150,000 hours of Apollo mission data to be shared with science communities: (i) speech/language technology, (ii) STEM/science and team-based researchers, and (iii) education/historical/archiving specialists. The goals here are to provide resources that allow a better understanding of how people work/learn collaboratively; and for Apollo, to accomplish one of mankind’s greatest scientific/technological challenges in the last century.

About John

John H. L. Hansen, received Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from Georgia Institute of Technology, and B.S.E.E. from Rutgers University. He joined the University of Texas at Dallas (UTDallas) in 2005, where he currently serves as Associate Dean for Research, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Distinguished University Chair in Telecommunications Engineering, and directs the Center for Robust Speech Systems (CRSS). He is an International Speech Communication Association Fellow (ISCA), IEEE Fellow, and has served as Member and Technical Committee Chair of IEEE Signal Processing Society, Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee (SLTC), and Technical Advisor to U.S. Delegate for NATO (IST/TG-01).

He served as ISCA President (2017-21), ISCA Board (2015-23), has supervised 99 Ph.D./M.S. thesis candidates (EE, CE, BME, TE, CS, Ling., Cog.Sci., Spch.Sci., Hear.Sci), was recipient of 2020 UT-Dallas Provost’s Award for Graduate Research Mentoring, and author/co-author of 840 journal/conference papers in the field of speech/language/hearing processing & technology. He served as Organizer/Chair/Co-Chair/Technical Chair for ISCA INTERSPEECH-2022, IEEE ICASSP-2010, IEEE SLT-2014, ISCA INTERSPEECH-2002, IEEE ICASSP-2024. He received the 2022 IEEE Signal Processing Society Leo Beranek MERITORIOUS SERVICE Award.

About Data Citizens

Data Citizens: A Distinguished Lecture Series is an ongoing course of in-depth talks by experts in the field of data science on a wide variety of topics including data visualization, big data, AI, and predictive analytics. The Data Citizens lecture series is co-sponsored by the Miami Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) and is free and open to the public.