Shamma and Espy-Wilson Receive Honda Initiation Grants

Professor Shihab Shamma (ECE/ISR) has received a Honda Initiation Grant (HIG) for his robotics work, "Cortical Analysis Audio Scene and Speech." This research applies biologically inspired principles of auditory cortical processing to analysis and representation of sound in humanoid robots. Specifically, Shamma will tackle auditory scene analysis, often known as the "Cocktail Party Problem"—how to focus on a single auditory stream in a multistream environment. He will also use the biologically inspired principles to detect and enhance speech signals in noisy and reverberant environments.

Associate Professor Carol Espy-Wilson (ECE/ISR) received an HIG for "Probabilistic Framework for Acoustic-Phonetic Knowledge Based Continuous Speech Recognition." The program is designed to discover and engage future university research partners for cutting-edge technology in broad areas.

Published September 28, 2005