On October 26 Mohamed Abou-Zleikha will give a talk at 13:00 in room A6-306.

Title: Exemplar Theory Meets Speech-based Technology

Abstract: Exemplar Theory was first introduced in psychology as a model of perception and categorization of concepts in the memory. It has emerged in several domains, AI reasoning (case-based reasoning) linguistics (phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics), machine learning (example based classification and categorization) and speech processing (recognition, production, and synthesis). The presentation will give an overview of my work on implementing the exemplar theory for speech recognition and synthesis. It will address the use of an exemplar-based technique combined with a model-based technique for speech recognition. It will also give an overview of different exemplar-based techniques for the generation of prosody parameters, which underpin my PhD thesis.

Bio: Mohamed Abou-Zleikha is a final stage doctoral student with a specific research interest in speech technology.  He received his B.A. from Damascus University in Syria, and his M.Sc from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. His work focuses on the construction of computational models of speech. He is interested in cognitively inspired models and the use of these models for speech recognition and synthesis.  His Ph.D. work focuses on prosody parameters generation using an exemplar-based technique for speech synthesis.