Expert profile: Colin Wightman [ Dr. ]

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Curriculum Vitae



                             Colin W. Wightman



                            35349 Long Hill Road

                              Kasota, MN 56050



                                Spring 2001



   Personal Data


   Date of birth: 29 January 1960

   Citizenship: United States of America

   Home Address: 35349 Long Hill Road, Kasota, MN 56050

   Telephone Numbers:

   507-385-0988 (home)

   507-389-6765 (office)

   Electronic Address: colin.wightman@mnsu.edu



   Education


   Ph.D. Boston University, Boston, MA. Department of Electrical,
   Computer and Systems Engineering. Requirements completed July 1991
   (January 1992 degree).

   Thesis Title: Automatic Detection of Prosody for Speech Recognition
   and Parsing.

   Thesis committee: Mari Ostendorf (advisor), Joyce Friedman, Patti
   Price, Hamid Nawab, Robert Kotiuga.


   M.S.E.E. State University of New York at Stony Brook. Department of
   Electrical Engineering, December 1985. Thesis Title: Simulation of
   Atmospheric Noise at VLF, Evaluation of Noise Processing Algorithms.
   Thesis committee: Don Ucci (advisor), John Murray, Thomas Robertazzi.


   Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Department of Agricultural
   Engineering. September 1982 - May 1983. (credits transferred to Stony
   Brook)


   B.S. Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. Department of Engineering,
   June 1982.



   Teaching Experience



   2000 - present Associate Professor and Chair - Department of Computer
   and Information Sciences, Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN.
   Provide overall coordination and guidance for a department of 25
   faculty members with over 1000 undergraduate majors. Facilitate
   communication between the faculty and administration. Identify,
   create, and nurture relationships with local industry.


   1998 - 2000 Assistant Professor - Department of Computer and
   Information Sciences, Minnesota State University, Mankato, MN. Teach
   undergraduate courses in computer programming and organization. Chair
   of the departmental curriculum committee.


   1991 - 1996 Assistant Professor - Department of Electrical
   Engineering, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro,
   NM. Taught undergraduate courses in linear systems theory, including
   time and frequency domain analysis of both continuous and discrete
   systems, and in analog electronics. Also coordinated the senior design
   projects and taught laboratory sections of analog and digital
   electronics and microprocessor design courses. Advisor and technical
   coordinator for the New Mexico Tech Solar Racing Team. Granted tenure
   in spring, 1996.


   1988 - 1989 Graduate Teaching Fellow - Department of Electrical,
   Computer and Systems Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA.
   Responsible for all aspects of the laboratory component of a
   two-semester analog electronics course. Received Graduate School Award
   for Excellence in Teaching.


   Fall 1986 Visiting Lecturer - Department of Computer Science,
   Framingham State College, Framingham, MA. Conducted a junior-level
   course in Software Engineering.


   1979 - 1982 Professor's Assistant - Department of Engineering,
   Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA. Tutored students and assisted
   professors in the laboratory. Also graded papers and supervised the
   computer lab (part-time).


   1978 - 1980 Ranger-Naturalist - Department of Forests, Parks and
   Recreation, Montpelier, Vt. in cooperation with the Green Mountain
   Club. Interpreted biological principles to the public in formal tours
   and informal talks (summers).



   Professional Experience


   Registration: Registered Professional Electrical Engineer in
   Massachusetts.


   Summer 1999 Consulting Researcher - AT&T Research Laboratories,
   Florham Park, NJ. Developed a streamlined formalism for efficiently
   labeling prosody in spontaneous speech. Developed tools to support
   this methodology and trained AT&T personnel in their use. Also
   integrated automatic labeling algorithms into the voice-creation
   process for the AT&T Speech Synthesis system, thereby improving the
   synthesis quality while reducing the effort required to produce a new
   voice from seven person-years to three person-days.


   1996 - 1998: Chief Technical Officer - Linguistic Technologies, Inc.,
   Saint Peter, MN. Company Co-Founder. Conceived and designed an
   Enterprise architecture for delivering large-vocabulary, continuous
   speech recognition to the medical transcription service industry.
   Responsible for overall systems architecture (client/server, Intranet,
   and Extranet), network and computational infrastructure (LAN, WAN,
   data center design, capacity planning, security, disaster planning),
   and matching customer needs with corporate capabilities (external
   sales proposals and internal evangelizing). Developed strategic and
   tactical business plans.


   Summer 1995 Consulting Scientist - Computing Research Lab, New Mexico
   State University, Las Cruces, NM. Integrated speech recognition
   technology into natural language workstation developed at CRL and
   studied the applicability of speech recognition to other CRL systems.


   Summer 1994 Invited Researcher - ATR Advanced Telecommunications
   Laboratory, Kyoto, Japan. Conducted research on the representation and
   modeling of prosody in speech synthesis and recognition. Developed
   automatic recognition algorithms as aids for prosodic transcription.


   Summer 1992 Research Associate - Rome Speech Processing Laboratory,
   Griffiss AFB, Rome, NY. Conducted research on the perception of
   prominence in spontaneous speech.


   1991 - 1996 Assistant Professor - Department of Electrical
   Engineering, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Socorro,
   NM. Taught undergraduate courses in electrical engineering. Conducted
   research in speech understanding systems, and automatic labeling of
   prosodic information in spontaneous speech.


   1989 - 1991 Research Assistant - Department of Electrical, Computer
   and Systems Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA. Performed
   research to develop computational models for detecting prosody and
   evaluated this information as a knowledge source for speech
   recognition and understanding. Collaborated with linguists and
   computer scientists at Boston University, the Massachusetts Institute
   of Technology, and SRI International to formulate models. Developed,
   evaluated and refined models, and integrated successful models with
   existing system components in concert with researchers at SRI.


   1986 - 1988 Senior Engineer - Raytheon Company, Marlborough, MA.
   Member of the Software Program Management staff. Analyzed requirements
   for the MILSTAR satellite communications terminals and coordinated
   technical interface between internal and subcontracted software teams
   and hardware designers. Also developed system integration and test
   plans.


   1983 - 1986 Engineer - Eaton Corp., Command Systems Division,
   Farmingdale, NY. Developed DSP implementation of a modem for use at
   Very Low Frequencies (VLF). Performed theoretical analyses developed
   software requirements, coordinated software development and
   hardware/software interface, performed system integration including
   debugging signal-processing micro-code. Also presented technical
   material at formal design reviews and conducted informal meetings with
   customers.



   Honors and Awards


   New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology

   ·         Awarded tenure


   Boston University

   ·         Graduate School Award for Excellence in Teaching

   ·         Graduate Teaching Fellowship


   Swarthmore College

   ·         General Electric Graduate Teaching Fellowship

   ·         Phoebe Anna Thorne Scholarship



   Professional Memberships


   Association for Computing Machinery

   Membership in Sigma Xi

   Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers



Patents


   US Pat. # 6,161,087  Speech-recognition-assisted selective suppression
   of silent and filled speech pauses during playback of an audio
   recording, Colin W. Wightman and Joan Bachenko. Granted 12 December
   2000.


   A Method and System for Performing Text Edits During Audio Playback
   (pending), David E. Schulz, Colin W. Wightman, and Michael D. Crovitz.
   Filed 5 October 1998.




Publications


   C. W. Wightman, A. K. Syrdal. G. Stemmer, A. Conkie, and M. Beutnagel,
   "Perceptually  Based Automatic Prosody Labeling and Prosodically
   Enriched Unit Selection Improve Concatenative Text-To-Speech
   Synthesis". In Proceedings 2000 International Conference on Spoken
   Language Processing, Beijing, China.


   M. J. Makashay, C. W. Wightman, A. K. Syrdal, and A. Conkie,
   "Perceptual evaluation of automatic segmentation in text-to-speech
   synthesis". In Proceedings 2000 International Conference on Spoken
   Language Processing, Beijing, China.


   A. K. Syrdal, C. W. Wightman, A. Conkie, Y. Stylianou, M. Beutnagel,
   J. Schroeter, V. Strom, K. Lee, and M. Makashay, "Corpus-based
   techniques in the AT&T NextGen synthesis system". In Proceedings 2000
   International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Beijing,
   China.


   C. W. Wightman and R. C. Rose, "Evaluation of an Efficient Prosody
   Labeling System for Spontaneous Speech Utterances". In Proceedings of
   the IEEE Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Workshop,
   Keystone, CO, December 1999.


   C. W. Wightman, P. Hargrove, and B. Poburka, "Quantitative Evaluation
   of the Prosody of a Speaker with Williams Syndrome" (Poster).
   Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American
   Speech-Language-Hearing Association, San Francisco, CA, November 1999.


   C. W. Wightman and T. Harder, "Semi-Supervised Adaptation of Acoustic
   Models For Large-Volume Dictation". In Proceedings of Eurospeech-99,
   Budapest, Hungary, September, 1999.


   C. W. Wightman and D. Talkin. "The Aligner: Text to speech alignment
   using Markov Models and a pronunciation dictionary". In Speech
   Synthesis, J. van Santen, et al, ed. Springer-Verlag, 1996.


   C. W. Wightman and G. Martinez. "CSPOT: A real-world corpus for
   command spotting". In Proceedings of the International Conference on
   Signal Processing and Technology. Dallas, TX. October, 1994.


   C. W. Wightman and D. Talkin. "The Aligner: Text to speech alignment
   using Markov Models and a pronunciation dictionary". Proceedings of
   the second ESCA/IEEE workshop on Speech Synthesis. New Paltz, New
   York. September, 1994


   C. W. Wightman, and M. Ostendorf. "Automatic Labeling of Prosodic
   Patterns". IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio Processing. October,
   1994.


   C. W. Wightman and D. Talkin. "Computational Aids for the Study of
   Prosody" (Abstract Only). Invited paper at the spring meeting of the
   Acoustical Society of America. Boston, MA. June, 1994.


   C. W. Wightman. "Perception of Multiple levels of Prominence in
   Spontaneous

   Speech" (Abstract Only). Presented at the fall meeting of the
   Acoustical Society of

   America. Denver, CO. September, 1993.


   M. Ostendorf, C. W. Wightman, and N. M. Veilleux. "Parse Scoring with
   Prosodic Information: An Analysis-by-Synthesis Approach". Computer
   Speech and Language. July, 1993.


   C. W. Wightman. "Annotation of Prominence in Spontaneous Speech". In
   Proceedings 1993 Mohawk Valley IEEE Dual Use Technologies and
   Applications Conference. Utica, NY. April, 1993.


   W. N. Campbell, and C. W. Wightman. "Prosodic Encoding of Syntactic
   Structure for Speech

   Synthesis. In Proceedings 1992 International Conference on Spoken
   Language Processing, Banff, Canada.


   N. M. Veilleux, M. Ostendorf, and C. W. Wightman. "Parse Scoring with
   Prosodic Information". In Proceedings 1992 International Conference on
   Spoken Language Processing, Banff, Canada.


   K.      Silverman, M. Beckman, J. Pitrelli, M. Ostendorf, C. Wightman,
   P. Price,

   J. Pierrehumbert, and J. Hirschberg. "TOBI: A standard for Labeling
   English Prosody". In  Proceedings 1992 International Conference on
   Spoken Language Processing, Banff, Canada.


   C. W. Wightman and M. Ostendorf. "Automatic Recognition of Prosodic
   Features". In Proceedings of the International Conference on
   Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, San Francisco, May, 1992.


   C. W. Wightman, M. Ostendorf, and S. Shattuck-Hufnagel. "Segmental
   Durations in the Vicinity of Prosodic Phrase Boundaries". The Journal
   of the Acoustical Society of America, March, 1992.


   C. W. Wightman and M. Ostendorf. "Automatic Recognition of Prosodic
   Phrases". In Proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics,
   Speech, and Signal Processing, Toronto, Canada, May, 1991.


   C. W. Wightman, N. M. Veilleux, and M. Ostendorf. "Using Prosodic
   Phrasing in Syntactic Disambiguation: an Analysis-by-Synthesis
   Approach". In Proceedings of the DARPA Speech and Natural Language
   Workshop, February, 1991.


   P. J. Price, C. W. Wightman, M. Ostendorf, and J. Bear. "Using
   Segmental Durations for Syntactic Disambiguation". In Proceedings of
   the International Conference on Spoken   Language Processing, Kobe,
   Japan, November 1990.

   An expanded version of this paper appears as "The Use of Relative
   Duration in Syntactic Disambiguation". In Proceedings of the DARPA
   Speech and Natural Language  Workshop, May 1990.


   P. J. Price, M. Ostendorf, and C. W. Wightman. "Prosody and Parsing".
   In Proceedings of the DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop,
   October 1989.


   C. W. Wightman and A. E. Hubbard. "A Data-Parallel Integrated Signal
   Detection Architecture". In Proceedings of the Eighth Biennial
   Microelectronics Symposium, Massachusetts Microelectronics Center,
   Westborough, MA, May 1989.


   C. W. Wightman and D. R. Ucci. "Computer Simulation and Processing of
   Atmospheric Noise at VLF". In Proceedings of the IEEE Military
   Communications Conference, Washington, DC, October 1987.


   C. W. Wightman and A. E. McGarity. "Experimental Investigations of
   Relative Testing Methods for Solar Space Heating Systems". In
   Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Section of the
   International Solar Energy Society, Houston, TX, June 1982.