shire@icsi.berkeley.edu

I am interested in applications of digital signal processing and statistical pattern recognition. Related interests include speech processing and communication systems. My recent research has concentrated on the speech processing front-end of automatic speech recognition systems. I would like to continue working with and researching related signal processing applications.

University of California, Berkeley. Expected completion in December, 2000.

Emphasis in Automatic Speech Recognition, Digital Signal Processing, and Statistical Pattern Classification. Principal Investigator: Nelson Morgan, Ph.D.

Thesis: Discriminant Training of Front-End and Acoustic Modeling Stages for Heterogeneous Acoustic Environments in Multi-Stream Automatic Speech Recognition.

University of California, Berkeley. May, 1997.

Emphasis in Digital Signal Processing. Principal Investigator: Nelson Morgan, Ph.D.

Thesis project: Syllable Onset Detection from Acoustics.

University of California at San Diego. December, 1991, magna cum laude.

Emphasis in Electronic Circuits and Systems.

Siemens ZT AG, Munich, Germany

Guest researcher. July, 1997 to November, 1997.

Worked as Gastwissenschaftler in the speech research group. Implemented and tested the incorporation of an alternate speech feature extraction algorithm into the Siemens digits recognition system. Conducted numerous experiments testing and comparing the Relative Spectral Analysis - Perceptual Linear Prediction algorithm to their previous Mel-Frequency Cepstral Coefficient algorithm in a Gaussian Mixture Model based recognition system.

ViaSat, Inc. Carlsbad, California

Member of Technical Staff. January, 1992 to August, 1994.

Served as a hardware design engineer. Designed and built interface and control circuit board assemblies for RF communication systems. Selected projects included designing and building VME compatible RF Mixer control boards; general purpose register based Centronics port control boards; digital satellite network simulator test fixture for a satellite modem; and HF/UHF mixer design support.

Advanced Processing Laboratories, San Diego, California

Member of Technical Staff. June, 1991 to December, 1991.

Served as a junior systems engineer working on hardware device drivers for real-time systems. Developed drivers for A/D convertor, digital I/O, and time code processing VME boards and wrote test and real-time demonstration software. Developed under VxWorks and Unix in C with targets including SPARC, Motorola 68030, Tadpole, and Themis VME controller cards.

Data-driven feature extraction for multi-stream recognition. Used linear discriminant analysis techniques to design temporal frequency band filters optimized to specific acoustic conditions such as background noise and room reverberation. Analyzed and tested the combination of multiple environment-specific feature extraction routines used in parallel in an automatic speech recognition system for the purpose of robustness to acoustic environments. Investigation supervised by Dr. Nelson Morgan and Dr. Hynek Hermansky.

Syllable onset detection. Developed acoustic-based signal processing features to aid in the detection of syllable onset boundaries. Together with Su-Lin Wu, integrated the syllable onset information into a speech recognition system to improve word recognition performance. Investigation supervised by Dr. Nelson Morgan and Dr. Steven Greenberg.

Perceptual experiments. Constructed signal processing routines to alter speech characteristics for the purposes on measuring its effects on human intelligibility. Processing included severe filtering of frequency band energy envelopes, frequency-band shifting, and minimization of spectral cues. Tested the intelligibility limit of distortion parameters to gain insight into the human auditory perceptual system. Investigation supervised by Dr. Nelson Morgan and Dr. Steven Greenberg.

Audio Signal Processing in Human and Machine. Course CV750CA/EECS225D instructed by Dr. N. Morgan and Dr. B. Gold. Graduate level course covering topics such as acoustic signal processing, speech signal processing, pattern classification, and automatic speech recognition. Served as one of two teaching assistants for the video course for students in industry. Served as main assistant instructor for topics of signal processing and speech feature extraction.

Digital Design Laboratory. Course EECS150 instructed by Dr. T. Obermeier. Upper-division undergraduate course covering digital design techniques and laboratory work. Served as one of several teaching assistants. Supervised a digital design laboratory and provided discussion lectures on design techniques.

Additional. Guest Lecture at Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. Gave an invited lecture to a signal processing course on speech signal processing. Also gave research talks at Siemens AG, Munich, Germany, the International Computer Science Institute, and research conferences.

Electric Circuits Laboratory. Courses ECE 52ABC instructed by Dr. M. Rotenberg. Undergraduate laboratory course on electric circuits and systems. Served as an undergraduate teaching assistant supervising laboratory work and assisting students in laboratory experiments.

Advanced Calculus with Applications. Course 105A instructed by Dr. G. Lewak. Upper-division undergraduate course covering complex analysis and analytic functions. Served as a workshop leader and tutor for the Minority Engineering Program (MEP) and the Ronald McNair programs. These programs provided additional tutoring and instruction for minority and women students in science and engineering.