Boulder Language Technologies

wward@bltek.com 

PERSONAL DATA

Born: November 17, 1951, Pensacola, FL, USA

ACADEMIC AND PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS

1998 - Research Professor, Center for Spoken Language Research,
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO

1986 - 1998 Research Associate, Research Computer Scientist, Senior Research Computer Scientist, School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

1994 - 1998 President, Multicom Research, Pittsburgh, PA

1984 - 1986 Member of Technical Staff , ATT Information Systems Labs, Denver, CO

1984 -1987 Partner, Daemon Associates, Boulder, CO

1981 -1983 President, Computer Systems Consultants, Panama City, FL

EDUCATION

Ph.D. Quantitative Psychology, 1984, University of Colorado, Boulder,
Thesis: A Signal Processing Model of Auditory Lateralization

M.A. Quantitative Psychology, 1981, University of Colorado, Boulder,
Thesis: The Precedence Effect Revisited

B.A. Mathematical Science / Psychology, 1973, Rice University, Houston, Texas

ACADEMIC HONORS

Allen Newell Medal for Research Excellence, Carnegie Mellon University, 1992

REFEREED PUBLICATIONS

Kadri Hacioglu and Wayne Ward, "A Word Graph Interface for a Flexible Concept Based Speech Understanding Framework", Eurospeech 2001, Aalborg Denmark, Sept. 2001.

Jianping Zhang, Wayne Ward, Bryan Pellom, Xiuyang Yu, Kadri Hacioglu, "Improvements in Audio Processing and Language Modeling in the CU Communicator", Eurospeech 2001, Aalborg Denmark, Sept. 2001.

Jurafsky, Dan, Wayne Ward, Zhang Jianping, Keith Herold, Yu Xiuyang, and Zhang Sen. 2001. What Kind of Pronunciation Variation is Hard for Triphones to Model? Proceedings of ICASSP-01, I.577-580, Salt Lake City, Utah.

K. Hacioglu, W. Ward, "Combining Language Models : Oracle Approach", Human Language Technology Conference (HLT-2001) San Diego, March 2001.

B. Pellom, W. Ward, J. Hansen, K. Hacioglu, J. Zhang, X. Yu, S. Pradhan, "University of Colorado Dialog Systems for Travel and Navigation", Human Language Technology Conference (HLT-2001) San Diego, March 2001.

K. Hacioglu, W. Ward, "Dialog-Context Dependent Language Modeling Using N-Grams and Stochastic Context-Free Grammars", IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP-2001), Salt Lake City, May 2001.

R. San-Segundo, B. Pellom, K. Hacioglu, W. Ward, J.M. Pardo, "Confidence Measures for Dialogue Systems," IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP-2001), Salt Lake City, May 2001.

B. Pellom, W. Ward, S. Pradhan, "The CU Communicator: An Architecture for Dialogue Systems", International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP), Beijing China, November 2000.

R. San-Segundo, B. Pellom, W. Ward, J. M. Pardo, "Confidence Measures for Dialogue Management in the CU Communicator System," IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP-2000), Istanbul Turkey, June 2000.

Ward, W. and Pellom, B., "The CU Communicator System", IEEE Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding Workshop, Keystone Colorado, December 1999

Yu, X. and Ward, W., "Corrective Training for Speaker Adaptation", EuroSpeech 99, Budapest

Krishnan, G. and Ward, W., "Characterizing Speech Rate by Vowel Durations", ICSLP-98, Sydney

Gillett, J. and Ward, W., "A Language Model Combining Trigrams and Context-Free Grammars", ICSLP-98, Sydney

Markey, K. and Ward, W., "Lexical Tuning Based on Triphone Confidence Estimation",
Proceedings of Eurospeech 97, September 1997

Uhrik, C. and Ward, W., "Confidence Metrics Based on N-Gram Language Model Backoff Behaviors",
Proceedings of Eurospeech 97, September 1997

Bergen, Z. and Ward, W., "A Senone Based Confidence Measure For Speech Recognition",
Proceedings of Eurospeech 97, September 1997

Young, S. R. and Ward, W. H., "The Role of Higher-Level Semantic, Pragmatic and Discourse Knowledge in Reognizing and Understanding New Spoken Words and Phrases", ESCA Workshop on Spoken Dialog Systems - Theories and Applications, Hanstholm, Denmark, June, 1995.

Mayfield, L., Gavalda, M., Ward, W. H., and Waibel, A., "Concept-Based Speech Translation",
IEEE Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, May 1995.

Ward, W. and Issar, S., "The CMU ATIS System",
Proceedings of ARPA Workshop on Spoken Language Technology, Jan 1995

Issar, S. and Ward, W., "Flexible Parsing: CMU's Approach to Spoken Language Understanding",
Proceedings of ARPA Workshop on Spoken Language Technology, March 1994

Ward, W., "Extracting Information From Spontaneous Speech" International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, September 1994.

Issar, S. and Ward, W., "CMU's Robust Spoken Language Understanding System"
IEEE Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, April 1994

Ward, W. and Issar, S., "Integrating Semantic Constraints Into the SPHINX-II Recognition Search"
IEEEl Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, April 1994

Ward, W. and Issar, S., "Recent Improvements in the CMU Spoken Language Understanding System",
Proceedings of ARPA Workshop on Human Language Technology, March 1994

Issar, S. and Ward, W., "CMU's Robust Spoken Language Understanding System",
Proceedings of EUROSPEECH 93, September 1993

Young, S. and Ward, W.,
"Recognition Confidence Measures for Spontaneous Spoken Dialog",
Proceedings of EUROSPEECH 93, September 1993.

Young, S. and Ward, W., "Using Semantics and Pragmatics in Speech Recognition",
Proceedings of EUROSPEECH 93, September 1993

Young, S. and Ward, W., "Learning New Words From Spontaneous Speech",
IEEE Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, April 1993.

Ward, W. and Young, S., "Flexible Use of Semantic Constraints in Speech Recognition", IEEE Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, April 1993.

Young, S. R., Huang, X., Ward, W. H. and Stern, R., "Overview of Recent Research at CMU in Speech Recognition and Spontaneous Spoken Language Understanding", Proceedings of the Fifth DARPA Workshop on Speech and Natural Language, Morgan Kaufmann, 1992.

Ward, W., Issar, S. Huang, X., Hon, H., Hwang, M., Young, S., Matessa, M., Liu, F., Stern, R.,
"Speech Understanding In Open Tasks", Proceedings of the Fifth DARPA Workshop on Speech and Natural Language, Feb 1992

Kita, K. and Ward, W., "Incorporating LR Parsing Into Sphinx", IEEE ICASSP , April 1991

Ward, W. H., "The Phoenix System: Understanding Spontaneous Speech", IEEE ICASSP , April 1991

Ward, W. H., "Evaluation of the CMU ATIS System", Proceedings of the Fourth DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, Feb 1991

Ward, W. H., "The CMU Air Travel Information Service: Understanding Spontaneous Speech",
Proceedings of the DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, June 1990

Ward, W. H., "Modelling Non-verbal Sounds for Speech Recognition" , Proceedings of the DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, Oct 1989

Ward, W. H., "Understanding Spontaneous Speech", Proceedings of the DARPA Spoken Language Workshop, Feb 1989

Young, S. R., Hauptmann, A. G., and Ward, W. H. "Using Dialog-Level Knowledge Sources to Improve Speech Recognition", Communications of the ACM, 32 (2) 1989.

Young, S. R., Hauptmann, A. G. and Ward, W. H. "Layering Predictions: Flexible use of Dialog Expectation in Speech Recognition", IJCAI-89, Morgan Kaufmann: San Mateo, 1989, 1543 - 1549.

Young, S.R., Hauptmann, A.G., Ward, W.H., Smith, E.T., and Werner, P., "High Level Knowledge Sources in Usable Speech Recognition Systems", CACM 32, 2, Feb 1989, 183-194

Young, S.R. and Ward, W.H. , "Towards Habitable Systems: Use of World Knowledge to Dynamically
Constrain Speech Recognition", Second Symposium on Advanced Man-Machine Interface through Spoken Language, 1988

Young, S.R., Hauptmann, A.G., and Ward, W.H. , "An Integrated Speech and Natural Language Dialog System: Using Dialog Knowledge in Speech Recognition", AAAI 88

Ward, W. H., Hauptmann, A. G., Stern, R. M., and Chanak, T.
"Parsing Spoken Phrases Despite Missing Words", IEEE ICASSP 88

Stern, R. M., Ward, W. H., Hauptmann, A. G., and Leon, J.
"Sentence Parsing with Weak Grammatical Constraints", IEEE ICASSP 87

Book Chapters

Ward, W., "Tools For Constructing Spoken Dialog Systems", in Automated Spoken Dialog Systems, Ed. S. LuperFoy, 1998

Young, S. R. & Ward, W. H., "Towards Habitable Systems: Use of World Knowledge to Dynamically Constrain Speech Recognition", in Recent Research Towards Advanced Man-Machine Interface through Spoken Language, Eds. H. Fujisaki, S. Kiritani, K. Shirai & S. Sekimoto, pgs. 385 - 400, 1990.

Young, S. R., Hauptmann, A., Ward, W. H., Smith, E. & Werner, P., "High Level Knowledge Sources in Usable Speech Recognition Systems", in Readings in Speech Recognition, Eds. A. Waibel and K. Lee,
Morgan Kaufmann, pgs 538 - 550, 1990.

PhD STUDENTS

Current Advisor

• Sameer Pradhan
• Payal Prabhu

Committee Member - Graduated

• Aki Oshima - CSE - Carnegie Mellon University
• Tom Sullivan - CSE - Carnegie Mellon University
• Yonghong Yan - CSE - Oregon Graduate Institute
• Lin Chase - Robotics - Carnegie Mellon University
• Mosur Ravishankar - CSD - Carnegie Mellon University
• Don Colton - CSE - Oregon Graduate Institute, 1996
• Monika Woszczyna - CSD - University of Karlsruhe, Germany, 1998
• Ye-Yi Wang - CSD - Carnegie Mellon University
• John Paul Hosum - CSD - Oregon Graduate Institute
• Marsal Gavalda - LTI - Carnegie Mellon University
• Laura Tomiyoko - LTI - Carnegie Mellon University
• Ruhi Sarikaya - EE - Duke University, 2001

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Courses

University of Houston, 1974-75, Introduction to Programming,
undergraduate course on algorithms, data structures and PL/I

Course Lectures

Speech Recognition Research: Aspects of Spontaneous Speech
NTU Satellite Network Advanced Technology Program, April 1989.
American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) and National Technical
University (NTU) televised course. Taped at the University of Maryland.

Understanding Spontaneous Speech
Carnegie Mellon, Advanced Perception, Fall 1991, Fall 1992
Oregon Graduate Institute, Speech Recognition, May 1991, April 1992, April 1993

Speech Recognition
Carnegie Mellon, Advanced Perception, Fall 1993

Stochastic Language Models
Carnegie Mellon, Advanced Perception, Fall 1993

HMM's in Speech Recognition 1 & 2
Oregon Graduate Institute, Speech Recognition, April 1992, May 1995
Carnegie Mellon, Speech Recognition, Spring 1994

Natural Language Parsing 1 & 2
Carnegie Mellon, Natural Language Understanding, Fall 1992

Extracting Information from Spontaneous Speech
Oregon Graduate Institute, Spoken Language Systems, March 1994

Integrating Speech and Natural Language
Oregon Graduate Institute, Spoken Language Systems, March 1994, May 1995

INVITED TALKS

Dialog Management in the CMU Spoken Language Systems Toolkit
Twente Workshop on Language Technology, June 1996

Understanding Spontaneous Speech
Johns Hopkins University, Feb 1995

Extracting Information From Spontaneous Speech
Bell Northern Research, Dec 1994

Extracting Information From Spontaneous Speech
Duke University, Nov 1994

Building Speech Applications
ARPA Workshop on Language Portability, Oct 1994

Extracting Information From Spontaneous Speech
Voice Processing Corporation, July 1994

Understanding Spontaneous Speech
Microsoft Corporation, June 1994

A Semantic Representation for Spoken Language Understanding
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, May 1994

Understanding Speech
NYNEX, Dec 1993

A Semantic Representation for Spoken Language Understanding
IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition, Snowbird, UT, Dec 1993

Spoken Language Systems
Martin Marietta Labs, July 1993

Robust Air Travel by Voice, ARPA Spoken Language Technology presentations,
National Academy of Science, April 1993

CMU ATIS Benchmark Evaluation
DARPA Workshop on Spoken Language Technologies, Jan 1993

Semantics in Speech Understanding
European Network in Language and Speech Workshop on Integrating Speech and Natural Language, July 1992

Speech Research at Carnegie Mellon University
National Security Agency, April 1991

Understanding Real Speech
Apple Computer, August 1990

Experiments in Parsing Word Lattices
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Feb 1990

Predictive Use of Knowledge for Speech Recognition
ATR Symposium on Basic Research for Telephone Interpretation, Dec 1989

Understanding Spontaneous Speech
MIT Cape Cod Spoken Language Workshop, July 1989

Grammatical Constraint in Spontaneous Speech
AAAI Spring Symposium on Spoken Language Systems, March 1989

Semantics in Human-Machine Spoken Interaction
DARPA Speech Recognition Workshop, November 1987

Non-Grammatical Parsing and Robust Systems
DARPA Speech Recognition Workshop, June 1988

RESEARCH FUNDING

1998 Ward, W., Gift for Parse Confidence Estimation , $59,000, Nortel
1996 Ward, W., Gift for Spoken Language Research , $59,000, Nortel

1995 - 1998 Ward, W., Holtmeier, R., Intelligent, Spoken Multi-Media Electronic Patient
Medical Records, $2,000,000, National Institute of Standards and Technology ATP

1995 - 1996 Ward, W., Issar, S., A Voice Library Information System,
$356,000, National Institute for Standards and Technology

1994 Ward, W., Gift for Spoken Language Research , $40,000, Bell Northern Research

1986 - 1998 Reddy, R., et. al., Research on Spoken Language Understanding, DARPA

EXTERNAL PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Service

Member IEEE Technical Committee for Speech, 1992-1996

Participant NSF Workshop on Spoken Language, Feb 1992

Session Chair

IEEE Workshop for Automatic Speech Recognition, Language Modeling, Dec 1995

ICASSP 93, Language Modeling, April 1993

DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, Spoken Language Systems, Feb 1992

DARPA Speech and Natural Language Workshop, Spoken Language Systems, June 1990

Reviewer

International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing

National Science Foundation: Information, Robotics and Intelligent Systems

IEEE Transactions on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America