Keynote Speeches

Topic: Why should people care about Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing technologies?

Hsiao-Wuen Hon,  Assistant Managing Director, Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA)

Abstract:
Should a student choose Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing as his major instead of semiconductor? Why do companies like Microsoft spend billions of dollars in R&D of Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing? In this talk, I will provide a historical aspect of why Microsoft started R&D in Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing, how these technologies got deployed into mainstream
Microsoft products and finally what products and features you can expect to be benefited from continuing development of these technologies. There are unbounded applications and potential benefit Computational Linguistics and Speech Processing technologies can bring to millions of users.

Biography:
Dr. Hsiao-Wuen Hon is the assistant managing director of Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) . He is supervising research in speech, natural language processing, information retrieval, internet search, audio/video indexing retrieval and other related areas. Before joining MSRA, Dr. Hon was the Architect in Speech.Net at Microsoft Corporation.  Besides overseeing all architectural and technical aspects of the award winning MicrosoftR Speech Server product (VSLive! Editor Choice Award), Natural User Interface Platform and Microsoft Assistance Platform, he is also responsible for managing and delivering statistical learning technologies for Natural Interactive Service Division (NISD). Dr. Hon joined Microsoft Research as a senior researcher at 1991 and has been a key contributor of Microsoft's SAPI and speech engine technologies.  Before joining Microsoft, Dr. Hon worked at Apple Computer, Inc., where he was a principal researcher and technology supervisor at Apple-ISS research center.  Dr. Hon led the research and development for Apple's' Chinese Dictation Kit, which receives excellent reviews from many industrial publications and a handful of rewards, including Comdex Asia'96 Best software product medal, Comdex Asia'96 Best of the Best medal and Singapore National Technology award.  

Dr. Hon received the B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University; and M.S. & PhD degrees in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.  While at CMU, Dr. Hon is the co-inventor of CMU SPHINX system on which many commercial speech recognition systems are based on, including Microsoft and Apple. Dr. Hon is an international recognized speech technologist and has published more than 90 technical papers in various international journals and conferences. He is currently a senior member of IEEE and an associated editor for IEEE Transaction of Speech and Audio Processing. He has also been serving as chairs and reviewers for many international conferences and journals.  Dr. Hon holds 35 US patents.

Topic: From the Lab to Ubiquity: Speech Technology's Road to Mainstream

Eric Chang, Assistant Managing Director, Microsoft Research Asia Advanced Technology Center

Abstract:
Invention, development, and widespread adoption of any discontinuous innovation follow a technology adoption life cycle, as discussed by Geoff Moore in his book "Crossing the Chasm". Speech technologies have been researched in the lab since the early 1900's.  In this talk, I will provide a brief history of the development of speech synthesis technology and speech recognition technology and offer my view on where these technologies are on the technology adoption life cycle.

Biography:
Eric Chang joined Microsoft Research Asia in July, 1999. Eric is currently the Assistant Managing Director of MSR Asia Advanced Technology Center, where he is in charge of program management, operations, and technology incubation. Previously, Eric was the research manager of the speech group at MSR Asia.  Some results from his group are the Mandarin speech recognition engine included in Office XP and the Mulan bilingual text to speech system. Prior to joining Microsoft Research, Eric was one of the founding members of the Research group at Nuance Communications, a pioneer in natural speech interface software for  telecommunication systems. While at Nuance, Eric worked on various projects involving confidence score generation, acoustic modeling, and robust speech detection. He also led the technical effort to develop the Japanese version of the Nuance product. This project led to the world's first deployed Japanese natural language speech recognition system. Eric has also developed speech recognition algorithms at M.I.T. Lincoln Laboratory, invented a new circuit optimization technique at Toshiba ULSI Research Center, and conducted pattern  recognition research at General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center.

Eric Chang graduated from M.I.T. with Ph.D., Master and Bachelor degrees, all in the field of electrical engineering and computer science. While at M.I.T., he was inducted into the honorary societies Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Xi. Eric has published papers in the fields of speech recognition, neural networks, and genetic algorithms in various journals and conferences. He is the author of several granted and pending patents. His research interests are spoken language understanding, machine learning, and signal processing.