Research

I am a senior research fellow at The Centre for Speech Technology Research. I conduct research into machine learning techniques for speech processing, in particular acoustic modelling for automatic speech recognition (ASR). My goals are to improve the accuracy and portability of ASR systems, and to develop search engines for audio material.

The themes of my work to date are the use of knowledge about speech production in models for automatic speech recognition, investigation of subword units other than phones, including factored representations such as acoustic/articulatory features, and improving robustness and portability of ASR systems through transfer learning. I also conduct research on other spoken language technologies, including speech-based information retrieval and dialogue act recognition.

My long-term strategy is to develop a consistent machine-learning framework in which all components of spoken language processing systems can be jointly optimised with respect to a single objective function, which would be dependent on the end use. For example for automatic speech recognition, this might be minimum word error rate.

More information on my work, including publications and PhD thesis, can be found here or on the main CSTR publications page.

Hours

I am not currently working at CSTR, though come in once a week for PhD supervisions.

Personal

I now spend most of my working life at Vegware, where I am a director. Vegware develops, manufactures and distributes environmentally friendly catering disposables and food packaging. All Vegware products - cutlery, hot and cold drink cups, tableware, and packaging - are compostable or biodegradable, and all are made from either annually-renewable or recycled materials.

I live with my wife, Synnove, daughter Eva, son Louis, the hound Crosby and a couple of cats. Most of my time is shared between family and work, though I like to play music - dobro, banjo and piano, to cook, and given the chance, head for the hills.