Speech and Language Technologies Lab

Speech Lab, in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, at Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering (SSNCE), Chennai, was established in the year 2008 with Prof. Hema A. Murthy, IITM, as a mentor. The lab is headed by Dr. T. Nagarajan, Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science, Shiv Nadar University (SNU), Chennai and Dr. P. Vijayalakshmi, Professor and Head , Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering (SSNCE), Chennai. The lab initially came into existence to carry out a MeitY (Govt. of India)-funded project on developing text-to-speech synthesis systems for Indian languages and presently there are several ongoing projects funded by multiple government and private organizations at Speech Lab. The members of the lab include the faculty members, research scholars, UG and PG students, and project staff associated with the domain of speech and language processing.

Vision

To significantly reduce communication barriers, between human beings and between humans and machines, that are predominantly caused by a language barrier or a disability or illiteracy.

Mission

• Develop a multidisciplinary environment to promote fundamental and applied research in speech/audio
• Develop state-of-the-art, socially-beneficial applications/products that would enhance human-computer and human-human interactions, by combining the skills of electrical and computer science engineers and linguists
• Promote collaborative research and development by establishing ties with industries to bridge the gap between advancements in research and presently available technology
• Establish a forum to interact with other researchers in the field and provide training and consultancy services to those that need them

Research Areas

• Automatic speech recognition
• Text-to-speech synthesis
• Prosody modelling
• Machine translation
• Speaker identification
• Speaker spoofing
• Speech enhancement
• Music signal processing
• Voice conversion
• Speech-enabled assist devices
• Assistive speech technology for people with cerebral palsy and autism spectrum disorder
• Array microphone-based speech analysis
• Silent speech recognition
• Forensic speech analysis
• Whisper speech analysis