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Aby Louw is an HLT Researcher. He obtained a B.Eng (Electronic Engineering) at the University of Pretoria in 2000, and completed his M.Eng (Electronic Engineering) in 2004. In 2002 Aby joined African Speech Technology, a project promoting the development of the official languages of South Africa through language and speech technology applications, where he worked as an HLT Researcher and Software Engineer. Aby has been part of the HLT Research Group from 2004, and is a key contributor on the various Text-To-Speech projects.
Research interests: Speech synthesis/recognition; machine learning; pattern recognition; harmonic plus noise modelling of speech; Speech unit selection strategies.
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Aditi Sharma is a Researcher in the HLT Research Group. She obtained her B Eng: Computer Engineering degree in 2005 from the University of Pretoria (UP) and is currently enrolled for the Masters in Technology Management programme at UP. In the HLT Research Group her work involves research in the field of User Interface Design (specifically voice interfaces) and Human Factors thereof, for the developing world, as well as relevant HLT-based applications and Human Computer Interaction aspects for this part of the world.
Research interests: Human Computer Interaction, User Interface Design, Usability Testing and Human Factors.
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Alta de Waal is a senior researcher in the HLT Research Group. She received her M.Sc in Mathematical Statistics from the University of the Free State in 2000. Alta has been working at the CSIR as a researcher since 1999. She is currently busy with her PhD, focusing on topic models for text modeling.
Research interests: Bayesian analysis, Text modelling, Computational methods (Gibbs sampling, Metropolis-Hastings algorithms, etc.), Nonparametric Bayesian inference
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Bryan Mc Alister is a software developer in the HLT research group at the Meraka Institute. He obtained a B.Eng (Computer Engineering) in 2005 from the University of Pretoria, and started working at the CSIR in 2006. Bryan is currently completing his B.Eng (Hons) in Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria.
Research interests: Software Engineering.
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Carmen Moors is the research group’s Office Manager. She manages the group's administrative systems and co-ordinates specific projects. She holds a BTech in Office Management and Technology (TUT) and is currently busy with a BA in Human and Social Science with specialisation in Development Studies. She has a keen interest in all spheres of development, supported by her previous working experience and current field of study.
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Charl van Heerden is currently a Masters student in Electronic Engineering at the University of Pretoria. His research is aimed at improving speaker verification systems to such an extent that it can detect when a recording of a person's voice is being played and reject it. Research is also being performed on time variability in a human's voice as a relevant feature in speaker verification.
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Christiaan Kuun is a Project Engineer in the HLT research group. He obtained his B.Eng degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria in 2005. His current work revolves around managing projects within the HLT research group and the SANReN Project. Apart from his work, he takes a keen interest in surfing, politics, business and public speaking.
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Christiaan van der Walt obtained his B.Eng degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria in 2005. He joined the HLT group in 2006 and is currently doing research on pattern recognition while he is busy completing a B.Eng (Hons) in Electronic Engineering at the University of Pretoria. He recently completed his Masters Degree and is currently busy with his PhD.
Research interests: Pattern recognition, Bioinformatics.
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Daniel van Niekerk completed his B.Eng. Computer Engineering degree at the University of Pretoria in 2006 and have joined the HLT Research Group as a Master's student. He is currently working on systems for language learning, particularly with regards to intonation in isiZulu.
Research interests: Natural language processing, speech synthesis as well as speech recognition.
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Etienne Barnard is the research leader of the CSIR/UP HLT Research Group. He obtained a PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. Etienne has served on the faculty of the University of Pretoria (1989 to 1993 and since 2001) and the Oregon Graduate Institute (from 1993 to 1997). He was employed as speech scientist with SpeechWorks International (now Scansoft) between 1997 and 2000, and was co-founder of Molo Afrika Speech Technologies, where he was employed from 2000 to 2003.
Research interests: Statistical approaches to speech recognition; intonation modeling for the indigenous South African languages; the development and application of HLT in the developing world; characterisation of the Plasmodium Falciparum genome; the prediction of protein secondary structure.
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Ewald van Dyk studied at the University of Pretoria and got his degree in B.Eng (Electronic) in 2006. He is currently searching through topics for his Masters degree at North-West University (Potchefstroom).
Research interests: Signal processing (OFDM/CDMA modulation and channel coding, equalization, etc), Pattern recognition, Artificial intelligence, Theoretical physics (general relativity, quantum physics, string theory, etc) as a hobby.
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Jaco Badenhorst is a Masters student in the HLT research group. He obtained his B.Eng degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Pretoria and joined the HLT group in 2006.
Research interests: Building intelligent speech systems and pronunciation detection.
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Jama Ndwe is a PhD student in HLT. He obtained a B.S. (computer engineering) at Wentworth Institute of Technology in 1995 and MSc (computer science) at Rhodes University in 2002. He has worked as an engineer at Telkom and a faculty member at the Walter Sisulu University. His research is on usability engineering of speech interfaces.
Research interests: Usability engineering, ergonomics, and cognitive science.
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Jimmy-James Masalesa is currently a Project Manager in the HLT Research Group. He has worked as a Researcher at the Research Unit for Experimental Phonology of the University of Stellenbosch, Language Practitioner at the Department of Arts and Culture and also as the Head of the Status Language Planning division of the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB). He holds an Honours degree in African Languages studies from the University of Stellenbosch.
Research interests: Electronic linguistic resource (both speech and text) creation as a crucial factor in the development of HLT applications.
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Louis Joubert is a software developer in the HLT research group at the CSIR. He obtained a B.Eng (Electronics) in 1990, a B.Eng (Hons) (Electronics) in 1995 and a M.Eng (Electronics) in 1999, all from the University of Pretoria. He joined the CSIR in 2003, after previously being employed at Nanoteq (since 1993) as a developer for information security products.
Research Interests: Text-based language processing, C++ and cryptography.
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Madelaine Plauché is a research associate of the HLT Research Group. She received her PhD in Linguistics from the University of Berkeley, California on the perception and confusion of speech sounds. More recently, she has worked on User Interface Design for developing regions, where literacy and language factors require innovative approaches to traditional Human Computer Interaction methodologies. Currently based in the USA, Madelaine is a key contributor on many of the group’s research projects, especially with regard to the human factors in speech-based interfaces.
Research interests: phonetics; applications of speech and language technologies; user interface design, human factors.
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Marelie Davel is a principal researcher in the HLT research group. She received her PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pretoria for research related to pronunciation modelling during the localisation of HLT systems. Her earlier degrees (in Computer Science and Mathematics) were obtained from the University of Stellenbosch and the University of London. Marelie has been involved in research and development projects at the CSIR since 1995. In 2002, Marelie spent a year as a visiting scientist with the speech group at Carnegie Mellon University, before returning to South Africa to assist with the establishment of the HLT Research Group. She was the group’s research group leader from 2003 to 2008.
Research interests: language localisation; acoustic and language model adaptation; bootstrapping; grapheme-to-phoneme prediction.
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Marius Peché Marius Peche is a Master’s student at the HLT Research Group. He obtained his B.Sc IT degree in 2004 and his Honours degree in Computer Science in 2005, both from the Rand Academic University. His Honours degree included subjects such as Biometrics and Artificial Intelligence.
Research interests: Speech recognition, AI search algorithms. Other interests: Nature, Outdoor Activities (such as hiking and rowing).
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Mpho Kgampe is an intern linguist in the HLT research group. She is a BTech Students at Tshwane University of Technology in language practice.
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Nathi Mqalo is an HLT Research Assistant. She obtained her B.A degree in Psychology at the University of Western Cape. Her interest lies in the interaction between humans and technology.
Research Interests: Psychology and human factors in IT systems.
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Neil Kleynhans obtained his B.Eng in Electronic Engineering at the University of Pretoria in 2003. He is working in the HLT research group where he is busy with his honours degree, with an aim to achieve his masters degree. He is planning to focus his research on speaker verification for e-Gov services.
Research interest: Pattern recognition
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Nicholas Zulu is a PhD student working in the HLT research group. He obtained his B.Sc (Electrical Engineering) in 2003 and completed his M.Sc (Electrical Engineering) in 2005 at the University of Cape Town. He joined the HLT group in 2006. Nicholas is currently looking into methods, and metrics for measuring language and dialect distance, speech recognition and ASR data analysis.
Research interests: Speech acquisition, speaker recognition, language identification and speech recognition.
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Olga Martirosian obtained her B Eng (Computer Engineering) in 2006. Her final year project involved research into detecting emotion in speech. She is currently searching for a research topic for her masters.
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Richard Carlson is a research associate of the HLT Research Group. He obtained a degree in Computer Science from the University of Texas in 1996. He went on to work on games and multimedia applications until joining Gracenote in 2000 where he worked on high transaction music information servers until 2004. Since then he has been working on low-cost open source software solutions that help increase access to information for users in developing regions. Currently based in the USA, Richard is a senior developer working with the group on a full-time basis.
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Ronald Kato is currently working with the HLT research group on a masters thesis related to statistical pattern recognition. He received his B.Eng (Hons) degree in Computer Engineering in 2007 from the University of Pretoria. He is currently enrolled at the University of Pretoria on a part-time basis
Research interests: Statistical machine translation, Pattern Recognition, Signal processing.
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Tebogo Gumede is a Social Scientist with a background in Health systems and health policy research. Her previous work include the evaluation of the Prevention of Mother to Child Transmission of HIV/AIDS (PMTCT), investigation of backstreet abortions post the passing of CTOP act, investigation of health cost coping strategies of rural households, investigating the surviving strategies of health care workers in the wake of increased work loads and teaching qualitative research methods. She is currently the team leader for application selection teams at the MERAKA institute.
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Victor Zimuis currently working with the HLT research group on a masters thesis related to morphological analysis. He received his B.Eng degree in Computer Engineering in 2004 from the University of Pretoria. He is currently enrolled at the University of Pretoria on a part-time basis.
Research interests: Automated Morphology, Intonation Modeling, and designing bootstrapping solutions (for any language resource)
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Zuko Fani is currently working with the HLT research group on a masters thesis related to speech synthesis. He received his B.Eng (Hons) degree in Computer Engineering in 2007 from the University of Pretoria. He is currently enrolled at the University of Pretoria on a part-time basis.
Research interests: pattern recognition and data mining.
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Previous group members |
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