From VAD to Siri: A 30-year Journey of Human Speech Understanding
Technology R&D at the Bell Systems
Harry M. Chang, D.Sc.
Sr. Voice Architect
To celebrate the 17th Anniversary of Macau University of Science and Technology, the Faculty of Information Technology and Macau Institute of Smart City held a seminar at Block A, Room A201 on Mar 28th,2017. Dr Harry M. Chango was the invited speakers from Honeywell Automated Control Solutions Labs in USA. Dr Chang’s talk was on “From VAD to Siri: A 30-year Journey of Human Speech Understanding Technology R&D at the Bell Systems”. Around 20 students and faculty members attended the seminar, including the Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology Zhang Du.
Abstract:
Human speech has been the heart and soul of the American telecom industry for over 140 years. Alexander Graham Bell filed his first and most famous patent for the telephone in 1874. Some 70 years later in 1944, the Bell Labs developed a device capable of recognizing human speech in its most primitive form in real time. Since then, Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology has inspired many STEM graduates to pursue its practical applications in the telecomm industry and beyond over the past 7 decades. It is in this context that the presenter will first give a historical review of some of major research activities in areas of human speech understanding technology at the Bell Systems over the last 30 years (1984-2014). Then, he discusses a recent research project in area of natural language understanding technology in context of voice search engine for TV content by exploring mutual information (MI) techniques using a structured text corpus derived from actual TV electronic programming guide (EPG).
Dr Harry M. Chang Biography:
Dr. Chang began his research career in the Bell systems in 1986 and span over the next 25 years, starting as a member of technical staff (MTS) at Nynex (the Baby Bell in the northeast region) in 1986 and then moved to Southwestern Bell in 1993 as a Senior MTS and subsequently as Principal MTS and Lead MTS at SBC Communications. After the historical merger of SBC Communications and the legacy AT&T from 2006 and 2013, he was a Lead MTS at the new AT&T Labs in Austin, TX. Currently, he is Sr. Voice Architect at Honeywell Automated Control Solutions (ASC) Labs in Minneapolis, MN. He received his BS degree in CS from Nanjing University in 1977. He enrolled in the first graduate program at the Chinese Academy of Science in Beijing from 1978 and 1980. He came to the U.S. in 1981 and received his doctor of science degree in CS from the Engineering School at Washington University in St. Louis in May 1987. Dr. Chang has published over 20 papers and holds 26 US patents. Dr. Chang is a Senior IEEE member.
Dr Chang in the seminar
Dr Chang and Dean of the faculty Pro ZhangDu