My Career: Science, Research, Policy, and Ethics
Haskins Laboratories and Yale University
Haskins Laboratories is a private, non-profit research institute, founded in 1935, that is affiliated with Yale University and the University of Connecticut. It has a primary focus on understanding the cognitive and neurophysiological bases of speech, language, and reading. My research spans a number of disciplines, combining computational, engineering, linguistic, physiological, and psychological approaches to study embodied cognition, most particularly the biological bases of speech and language. I am best known for my work on articulatory synthesis (computational modeling of the physiology and acoustics of speech production), speech perception, sinewave synthesis, signal processing, perceptual organization, and theoretical approaches and modeling of complex temporal events.
Starting in the early 1970s, I worked on foundational issues in speech technology. These include: participating with Rod McGuire on Haskins aspects of the ARPANET Network Voice Protocol, a predecessor of Voice over IP; collaborating with Leonard Szubowicz, Douglas Whalen, and others on digitized speech, particularly extensions of the Haskins Pulse-code modulation (PCM) implementation, focusing on expanding temporal markers and event labels; and working with Patrick Nye on the Digital Pattern Playback, which was eventually replaced by my HADES system.
During my time at Haskins, I was responsible for the design of many computational models and other software systems. Most prominent are ASY, the Haskins articulatory synthesis program, and SWS, the Haskins sinewave synthesis program, both developed in the 1970s. ASY expanded the Mermelstein vocal-tract model developed at Bell Laboratories, adding additional articulatory control, simulation of nasal sounds, sound generation, and digital sound production. Most importantly, I designed and implemented an approach for describing and controlling articulatory events, now known as speech gestures. In addition to use in standard articulatory synthesis, the ASY program has been used as part of a gestural-computational model that combines articulatory phonology, task dynamics, and articulatory synthesis. With Louis Goldstein and Mark Tiede, I designed a radical revision of the articulatory synthesis model, known as CASY, the configurable articulatory synthesizer. This 3-dimensional model of the vocal tract permits researchers to replicate MRI images of actual speakers and has been used to study the relation between speech production and perception.
The sinewave synthesis system that I designed, known as SWS, was based on a technique for synthesizing speech by replacing the formants (main bands of energy) with pure tone whistles, and was designed to explore the spatiotemporal aspects of speech signals. It was the first sinewave synthesis system developed for the automatic, large-scale creation of stimuli for perceptual experiments, and has been used by me, Robert Remez, David B. Pisoni, and other colleagues and researchers to study the time-varying characteristics of the speech signal. I is also the designer of the HADES signal processing system and the SPIEL programming language, a predecessor of MATLAB.
From 1992 through 2012, I was the core and administrative leader of Haskins Laboratories' main research activity, the National Institutes of Health/NICHD funded P-01 program project, “The Nature and Acquisition of the Speech Code and Reading.” During my Haskins career, I have served in many roles, including: Research Staff (1977-1997), Chief Technical Officer (1990-1992), Chief Operating Officer (1992-2000, 2003-2004), Vice President (1992-2015), Senior Scientist (1998-2015), Chief Executive Officer (2004-2015), CEO Emeritus (2016-present), Member of the Board of Directors (2018-present), editor of the Haskins Press (2021-present), and Chair of the Board of Directors (Jan. 1, 2023-present).
I am also an adjunct professor in the Department of Surgery, Otolaryngology, at the Yale University School of Medicine, a Research Affiliate in the Department of Psychology at Yale, and a Fellow at Yale’s Trumbull College.
See, also:
My Career: Science, Research, Policy, and Ethics
Ethical Issues Related to Research and Technology
White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
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