People & Alumni

Director

Carol Espy-Wilson
Director, Speech Communication Lab
Professor
Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Institute for Systems Researchemail : espy AT umd DOT edu

Current Postdoctoral Fellows

Nina Benway
Postdoctoral Fellow
Email : benway AT umd DOT edu
Nina R Benway, PhD CCC-SLP, is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Electrical and Computer Engineering with Dr. Carol Espy-Wilson. Nina’s research seeks to validate Dr. Espy-Wilson’s acoustic-to-articulatory speech inversion system for child speakers and speakers with speech sound disorders, for the long-term goal of extracting corrective, knowledge-of-performance articulatory feedback from speech sound learner audio.

Current Graduate Students

Ahmed Adel Attia
Research Assistant
Email : aadel AT umd DOT edu
Ahmed Adel Attia is a Ph.D. student and researcher at the University of Maryland. He obtained his bachelor’s degree with honors from Alexandria University in Egypt in 2020, where he ranked among the top students in his class. With extensive expertise in Deep Learning, Ahmed has gained valuable experience in its applications within NLP, computer vision, and speech-related fields. Presently, his research concentrates on speech articulation and production, utilizing deep learning to comprehend and analyze various aspects of speech phenomena.

Thanushi Withanage
Research Assistant
Email: thanushi AT umd DOT edu
Thanushi is a Ph.D. Student at SCL. She completed her bachelor’s degree from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka in 2019 in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Her research interests are in applications of deep learning to identify the correlation of mental health disorders with speech, specifically in Depression analysis.

Gowtham Premananth
Research Assistant
Email: gowtham8 AT umd DOT edu
Gowtham is a Ph.D. Student at SCL. He completed his bachelor’s degree from the University of Jaffna, Sri Lanka in 2021 in Computer Engineering. His research interests are in the applications of deep learning in speech and using it to understand how various medical conditions affect a person’s speech.

Current Undergraduate Students
 

Alumni

Post-Doctoral Researchers
Vahid Khanagha (2013 – 2017; currently at Motorola)
Xinhui Zhou (2010 – 2014; currently at Knowles)
Vikramjit Mitra (2011; currently at Apple Inc.)
Om Deshmukh (2006 – 2007; currently at Envestnet | Yodlee)
Gongjun Li
Zhaoyan Zhang (2002 – 2004; currently Associate Professor at the UCLA School of Medicine)
Suzanne Boyce (1994 – 1995; currently Professor at the University of Cincinnati)

PhD. Students
Name Graduated Title of Thesis Current Employment
Yashish M. Siriwardena 2023  “Towards Extending Acoustic-to-Articulatory Speech Inversion and Learning Articulatory Representations” Omnispeech
Nadee Seneviratne 2022  “Generalizable Depression Detection and Severity Prediction Using Articulatory Representations of Speech” MathWorks
Saurabh Sahu 2019  “Towards Building Generalizable Speech Emotion Recognition Models” Samsung
Ganesh Sivaraman 2017  “Articulatory representations to address acoustic variability in speech Variable Models” Pindrop
Daniel Garcia-Romero 2012  “Robust Speaker Recognition Based on Latent Variable Models” HLTCOE at JHU
Srikanth Vishnubhotla Feb 2011  “Segregation of Speech Signals in Noisy Environments” Apple Inc.
Vikram Mitra Dec 2010  “Articulatory Information for Robust Speech Recognition” Apple Inc.
Tarun Pruthi Jan 2007  “Analysis, Vocal-Tract Modeling, and Automatic Detection of Vowel Nasalization” Amazon
Om Deshmukh Jul 2006 “Synergy of Acoustic-Phonetics and Auditory Modeling Towards Robust Speech Recognition” Envestnet | Yodlee
Amit Juneja Dec 2004 “Probabilistic landmark detection based on acoustic-phonetic information for automatic speech recognition” IBM
Nabil Bitar * Fall 1997 “Acoustic modeling of speech based on phonetic features” GTE

M. S. (Thesis)
Name Graduated Title of Thesis Current Employment
Rahil Parikh ** May 2022 “Demystifying End-to-End Speech Segregation Networks” Amazon
Yi-Chun Ko ** Dec 2015 “A Study of feature sets for emotion recognition from speech signals” Google
Jingting Zhou ** 2011 “Automatic Speech CODEC Identification with Applications to Tampering Detection of Speech Recordings” Texas Instruments
Srikanth Vishnubhotla** Jan 2007 “Irregular Phonation Detection and Speaker ID” Apple Inc.
Sandeep Manocha ** Jul 2006 “Robust Voice Mining of Telephone Conversations” Microsoft
Thorvaldur Einarrson * Dec 2003 “Psychoacoustics based gain compensation for low listening level”  
Ariel Salomon * Dec 2000 “The Automatic Detection of Manner Landmarks using Simple Temporal Measures” Neighborly
Michelle Delaney * May 1998 “An Analysis of the Recognition Errors of a Phonetic Feature Based Speech Recognizer”  
Venkatesh Chari * May 1992 “Extraction of Formant Frequencies by Adaptive Enhancement of Fourier Spectra”  

M.S. (Projects)
Name Duration Title of Project
Tarun Pruthi ** 2003 Automatic Classification of Nasal Consonants
Om Deskmush * 2001 A Direct Measure of Proportion of Periodic and Aperiodic Energy in Speech Signals
Amit JuneJa * 2001 Acoustic-Phonetic Approach to Speech Recognition Based on Event Detection and Linear Discriminant Analysis
Nandini Srinivasan * May 2000 Removal of Artificial Larynx Device Resonances through Inverse Filtering
Kun Xia * 2000 Refinement of Formant Tracker for Automatic Speech Recognition
Eric Craft * 2000 Automatic Classification of Baby Babble into Broad Classes
Arindam Mandel * 2000 Comparison of Knowledge-based Recognition with Human Performance Using Impoverished Speech
Bethany Broom * 2000 Combining Different Order LPC Spectra to obtain Reliable Pole Estimates for Automatic Formant Tracking
Heather Cundiff * 2000 Analysis of Acoustic and Articulatory Data for American English /r/
Kun Ma * May 1999 Improvement of Alaryngeal Speech through the Automatic Insertion of Prosodic Information
Pelin Demirel * May 1999 Improvement of Alaryngeal Speech through the Automatic Replacement of the Artificial Excitation Signal with a Normal Excitation Signal
Qian Zhang * May 1998 Recognition of Impoverished Speech
Zach McCaffrey * May 1998 Replacement of Artificial Voice Excitation Signal with Natural Excitation Signal using Cepstral Analysis
Deborah Schwartz * May 1996 Signal Processing Algorithms for Electrolaryngeal Speech Enhancement
Carla Valera * May 1997 Common Features of Devoiced Semivowels
Neeraj Deshmukh * May 1995 A Strategy for Acoustic Modeling to Increase Efficiency of HG
Kenneth Grimes * May 1992 Formant estimation of vowels using Critical-band Filtering
Jack McLaughlin * May 1992 Extraction of the glottal waveform using inverse filtering
Tamer Onat * May 1992 Vowel recognition using neural networks and phonetic features

Undergraduate Students in Research Programs
Name Duration Title of Research Project
Kevin Chen Summer 2013 Segmental Signal-to-Noise Ratio Improvement Measurement and Its Analysis in Speech Enhancement Algorithms
Armand Kana Tano Summer 2012 Time Modification Techniques to Improve Speech Intelligibility for Older Hearing Impaired Listeners
Matthew Cohen Summer 2012 Time Modification Techniques to Improve Speech Intelligibility for Older Hearing Impaired Listeners
Jonathan Deutsche Summer 2011 Delta-Spectral Cepstral Coefficients for Robust Speaker Recognition
Justin Bare Summer 2011 Automatic Volume Leveler for Real Time Speech Applications
Jonathan Kola Summer 2011 Voice Activity Detection
Nick Prior Summer 2010 Algorithms on Noisy Speech for Hearing-Aid Users
Rob Bailey Summer 2009 Robust Speech Recognition: Articulatory Information to Account for Coarticulation
Kossivi Edji Summer 2009 Robust Speech Recognition: Articulatory Information to Account for Coarticulation
Kelly Brock Feb. 2009 to May 2009 Analysis of the Performance of the APP’s Periodicity Measure as a function of the Signal-to-Noise ratio of Speech
Jose Figuero Summer 2008 Algorithm for Noisy Speech for Cochlear Implant Users
Alex Colvin Summer 2007 A Comparison of Acoustic Parameters and MFCCs for Speaker Identification
Ryan Amundsen Summer 2007 Automatic Speaker Recognition Phonetic Discriminative Power
Timothy Burke Fall 2006 Replacing STFT filter bank in MPO processing with an Auditory filter bank
Kunle Ogunsuyi Summer 2006 Speaker Recognition and Voice Mining
Bilal Raja Summer 2006 Recognition of Nasalized and Non-Nasalized Vowels
Chris Turnes Spring 2006 The dependence of the MPO model on the exact structure of the filterbank used in implementation (Spring)
Geetika Nagpal Fall 2005 The dependence of the MPO model on the exact structure of the filter bank used in implementation
Avinash Yentrapati Summer 2005 Articulatory synthesis of sustained speech.
Ayana George Summer 2005 Implementation of a Spectral Mean Subtraction Algorithm for Speech Enhancement
Sai Hei Yeung Summer 2005 MRI-based 3D Finite-element Analysis and Modeling of the Vocal Tract for American English /r/
Ryan Aminzadeh Summer 2005 Unsupervised Speaker Segmentation of two-speaker conversations
John Lin Fall 2004 & Spr 2005 Comparison of the acoustic properties of speech sound produced in upright vs. supine position
Shuo Chen Summer 2004 Acoustic Parameters for Identification of Nasalized Vowels
Thomas Plummer Summer 2004 The Investigation of Acoustical Features in Text-Independent Speaker Verification
Qin Zou Spring 2004 Compensation Algorithms to Minimize the Effect of Noise on Acoustic Speech Parameters
Jalaal Deeb Summer 2003 Speaker Adaptation in Text-Independent Speaker Verificaton
Paul Young Summer 2003 Creating Feature-Based Finite State Automata for Speech Recognition
First prize in the RITE (Research in Telecommunications Engineering) Program at the University of Maryland
Jawahar Singh Summer & Fall 2003 A Graded Method for Determining the Proportion of Periodic/Aperiodic Energy in Speech Signals
Shong Yin Summer 2002 Speaker Recognition Implemented via GMM and Vector Quantization
Jason Strohmeir Summer 2002 Multilayer Perceptron Neural Network for Speech Recognition
Kazuhito Niimi Spr 1994 Automatic classification of stop consonants
Stephanie Zierten Fall 1992 & Spr 1993 Automatic Detection of Place of Articulation in Stop Consonants 
(Senior Honors Thesis)
Armen Balien Fall 1992 & Spr 1993 Automatic Detection of Acoustic Properties that Separate Adjacent Sounds with the Same Manner of Articulation 
(Senior Honors Thesis)
Vinay Chandra Fall 1991 & Spr 1992 Automatic Discrimination of Strident and Nonstrident Fricatives
(Senior Honors Thesis)
Valerie Padilla Spring 1991 Detecting linguistic features for use in a speech recognition system
Charles Robinson *** Fall 1990 & Spr 1991 An Acoustic Study of the Influence of /r/ on different F3 trajectories (BS Thesis)
Shawn Williams *** Fall 1989 & Spr 1990 An Acoustic Study of the Feature Retroflex (BS Thesis)

 

* Boston University
** University of Maryland
***Massachusetts Institute of Technology