Released on: August 14, 2008, 7:49 pm

Press Release Author: Institute for Infocomm Research

Industry: Software

Press Release Summary: . The Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) team beat 45
international institutions to emerge 1st in the National Institute of Standards and
Technology 2008 Speaker Recognition Evaluation

Press Release Body: Singapore, 15 August 2008 - Ever wondered how pranksters who
make hoax calls to emergency services can be identified and brought to justice? Now
there's a technology that can identify and spot the culprit easily by analyzing
voices from a regular phone system that most people make phone calls from.

A*STAR's Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) has invented a technology that can do
just that! The Speech and Dialogue Processing team in I2R beat 45 other
international institutions and topped the scores to emerge No. 1 in the National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) 2008 Speaker Recognition Evaluation.

NIST's annual benchmarking provides a worldwide platform for the calibration of
speech technology capabilities participated by academia and the leading institutions
from the industry. The benchmarking results recognize I2R's voiceprint technology
as the state-of-the-art technology in terms of accuracy through a series of tests
using real-world data. The technology is now able to detect up to 97% accuracy
between two voices as to ascertain whether they are from the same speaker. This
allows for the verification of voiceprints for large scale deployment in adverse
acoustic environments.
Professor Lye Kin Mun, Deputy Executive Director (Research) said, "I2R has always
been pitching our own capabilities in technology against other industry players
through participation in global challenges. It is through this that we can learn
more and improve ourselves, eventually winning international acclaim."
The I2R team is led by Dr Haizhou Li, Department Head of Human Language Technology,
with members, Bin Ma, Hanwu Sun, Donglai Zhu, Kong-Aik Lee, Khe Chai Sim, Changhuai
You, Rong Tong, Ismo Kärkkäinen, Vladimir Pervouchine, Yijie Li and Susanto
Rahardja.


Web Site: http://www.i2r.a-star.edu.sg

Contact Details: For media enquiries, please contact:
Mr Andrew Yap
Acting Manager, Corporate Communications
Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R)
DID: (65) 6419 1143 Fax: (65) 6466 7716
Email: jtyap@i2r.a-star.edu.sg