The Speech Group (formerly the Realization Group) conducts research in the areas of algorithms, architectures, and systems for speech and audio signal processing and pattern recognition. In the 1990s the emphasis of this group's work gradually became the application of these areas of study to problems in spoken language processing, and particularly in robust automatic speech recognition.
The Speech Group works closely both with other groups within ICSI and with several faculty members from the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department within UC Berkeley.
Key research areas of the Speech Group include auditory-inspired signal processing, statistical modeling, rich transcription of natural and impromptu meetings, and rich transcription of broadcast and conversational telephone speech.
The Speech Group is led by Steven Wegmann. In addition to his work at ICSI, Wegmann has worked at industrial research laboratories on problems in speech processing for nearly two decades, holding positions at Dragon Systems, Lernout & Hauspie, VoiceSignal Technologies, Nuance Communications, and Cisco Systems. Earlier in his career, he was a mathematician who specialized in algebraic topology. He obtained his doctorate in mathematics at the University of Warwick while he was a Marshall Scholar.
Read about specific projects of the Speech Group.