I have been working with speech technology for the past thirteen years - both in the industry and academia.

My primary occupation is with Speech @ Microsoft where I'm managing technology enhancement and innovation on the Core team. I'm also driving speech technology collaboration with Microsoft Research.

I received my PhD in Speech Technology from University College London. The topic of my dissertation is accent variation modeling and how to improve speech recognition accuracy for accented speakers. In short, my research offers a mechanism for automatically generating an idiodictionary, a user-specific pronunciation dictionary, at runtime based on accent features extracted directly from the user's speech.

I'm also on the board of AVIOS Seattle. The mission of AVIOS (Applied Voice Input/Output Soceity) is to promote practical applications of advanced speech technology. AVIOS has a number of chapters around the world actively engaged in the local speech technology community by organizing talks and networking events. We have now introduced a chapter in Seattle. If you want to hear more about the events, let me know or look here: http://www.avios.org/seattle

I have been a member of faculty in the Department of Linguistics since 2009 and I teach in the CLMS program.