Research Associate in Speech Recognition, UK

August 30, 2010

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Research Associate, Speech Recognition, University of Cambridge, UK

Job Description: A number of positions are expected to be available for Research Associates to work on DARPA-funded projects (GALE and RATS). An exceptionally well-qualified candidate may be appointed on the Senior Research Associate scale.

Global Autonomous Language Exploitation (GALE) is in on-going project. The aim of GALE is to develop and apply speech and language processing technologies to recognise, analyse and translate large volumes of speech and text in multiple languages. The Robust Automatic Transcription of Speech (RATS) project, subject to funding confirmation, aims to obtain information from highly degraded and/or noisy audio communication channels. The work on RATS project will focus on both keyword spotting and transcription.

A wide range of research areas will be pursued for these projects including: improving the word error rate of conventional speech recognition systems; model-based approaches for noise and channel robustness; and advanced keyword-spotting schemes. The work will use, and extend, the existing state-of-the-art large vocabulary recognition and noise robust systems developed at Cambridge University. For further details of the GALE project work at Cambridge see http://mi.eng.cam.ac.uk/research/projects/AGILE/index.html

This is an opportunity to work in a research group which has a world-leading reputation in speech recognition, adaptation and noise robustness. There are excellent opportunities for publications, travel and conference visits. The group has outstanding research facilities.

Candidates must have a very good first degree in a relevant discipline and preferably have a higher degree. Since the project will use and extend the HTK toolkit (http://htk.eng.cam.ac.uk), a good knowledge of C is required. In addition, experience in one or more of the following technical areas is a distinct advantage:

- speech recognition with the HTK toolkit;

- noise and channel robustness techniques for speech recognition;

- approaches to reverberant speech recognition;

- language modelling for large vocabulary speech recognition;

- keyword spotting.

There are a number of target languages for these projects including Arabic and Mandarin, knowledge of either of these languages would be an advantage.

The GALE project started on 1 September 2005. The RATS project is expected to start during September 2010. Appointments will be made for up to two years in the first instance with continuation subject to the yearly renewal of the project and satisfactory performance. Salary on appointment will be in the range from £27,319 to £35,646 for Research Associates and £32,458 to £43,840 for Senior Research Associates.

The CHRIS /5 (Application for Employment) and CHRIS /6 (Cover sheet for CVs) can be found at http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/forms/ . Please email the appropriate form with C.V. and covering letter to Mrs Janet Milne, Department of Engineering div-f@eng.cam.ac.uk. The application should be sent so as to reach her not later than 17 September 2010.

Closing date: 17 September 2010.

For further scholarship information:

Scholarship Tags: associate, Recognition, research, Scholarship, Speech, UK