Ph.D. - Electrical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology - 1988
John Hansen
Distinguished Chair in Telecommunications
Professor - Electrical Engineering
Associate Dean for Research in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science
Founder and Director of the Center for Robust Speech Systems
Professional Preparation
M.S. - Electrical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology - 1983
Georgia Institute of Technology - 1983
B.S. - Electrical Engineering
Rutgers University - 1982
Rutgers University - 1982
Research Areas
Expertise
- Voice recognition
- Speaker recognition
- Speaker analysis
- Speech modeling
- Smart cars
- Driving behavior
- Digital speech processing
- Speech forensics
- Speech enhancement
- Human-computer interaction
- Speech analysis
Research
Founded The Center for Robust Speech Systems (CRSS) at the Univ. of Texas at Dallas in 2005 which is focoused on interdisciplinary research in speech processing and human computer interaction.Oversees the CRSS - Speech & Speaker Modeling Group. Originally founded the Robust Speech Processing Laboratory in 1988 at Duke University, which became the Robust Speech Processing Group at CSLR in 1999, Univ. of Colorado, now the Center for Robust Speech Systems (CRSS-UTD). Research has focused on interdisciplinary areas in robust speech processing and recognition, digital signal processing, speech and speaker analysis, human-computer interfaces/interaction, speech enhancement and processing in noise, and voice communications. Specific research accomplishments include analysis and modeling of speech for voice and telecommunications applications, robustness issues for speech recognition in adverse conditions, speech enhancement, spoken document retrieval, in-vehicle voice navigation dialog systems, and voice modeling in noise, stress, accent, and Lombard effect. Has also had extensive collaborations on research in telemedicine, resulting in numerous contributions in medical speech processing involving detection and quality assessment of speech under stress and pathology. At Univ. of Colorado, he co-founded the Center for Spoken Language Research, which is now CRSS at UTD and has focused on rich transcription for spoken document retrieval, hands-free robust recognition for in-vehicle voice navigation, advanced human-computer interaction, speaker/speech analysis for stress, accent/dialect analysis and modeling, and Lombard effect. While at Duke University Dept. Electrical Engineering, established collaborative research program with Duke Medical Center (Dept. of Pediatrics, Speech & Language Pathology), Johns Hopkins Medical Center, Scottish Rite Children's Medical Center. At University of Colorado, he has established collaborations with Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, NATO ITO/RSG.10, Nagoya University (Japan), Aalborg University (Denmark), Helsinki Univ. of Technology (Finland), Vincent Voice Library (Michigan State Univ.), Collaborative Digitization Program (Colorado), and Tufts University Digital Library. At University of Texas-Dallas, he established/continued collaborations with Nagoya University (Japan), Koc Univ./Sabanci Univ. (Turkey), Aalborg University (Denmark), Collaborative Digitization Program (Colorado), SRI , IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Texas Instruments, University of Zaragoza (Spain), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, (Spain).
The majority of research in the field of speech processing for telecommunications focuses on formulating algorithms for ideal laboratory conditions. As many have shown, the resulting algorithms do not perform well in real or actual voice communication environments. The systems we develop focus on addressing issues relating to robustness issues of speech applications in telecommunications. Some of these issues relate to speech produced in noise, high stress, accent, or Lombard effect. The future of Multimedia human/machine interfaces will depend on system approaches which are capable of addressing the wide range of adverse conditions in which speech may be produced for applications in speech recognition, communications, language identification, speaker recognition, and other telecommunication applications.
Formulated the first class of constrained iterative speech enhancement algorithms based on novel properties of speech production and auditory processing. Established the only working framework based on Source Generator Theory for characterizing speech production under stress, resulting in novel stress equalization and noise suppression algorithms for robust speech recognition in noise, stress, and Lombard effect. NSF funded collaborative research program (with Michigan State Univ.: Electrical Engineering [Prof. Deller] and Vincent Voice Library [Prof. Seadle]) resulted in the development of SpeechFind [http://Speechfind.utdallas.edu] --- spoken document retrieval system which spans audio from the past 110 years. Research also in the area of smart vehicle systems for improved human-vehicle interaction. Includes DARPA sponsored CU-Move and NEDO/UTD supported UTDrive [http://www.utd.edu/research/utdrive/Home.htm], and international collaboration with Japan, Turkey, Singapore, Italy.
The Robust Speech Processing Laboratory was established in 1988, and continued on as the Robust Speech Processing Group at CSLR, and now CRSS at UD-Dallas.. Has served as Principal Investigator on more than $12M in external funded research from such sources as NSF, Whitaker Foundation, DoD/DARPA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, TSWG, IBM (T.J. Watson Research Center, Voice & Telephony; MWave DSP Development), AT&T Bell Labs (Government Systems, Wireless), Motorola, HRL, SpeechWorks, Visteon/Ford, Voice Signal Technologies, Mishubishi, Toyota CR&D, Working Solutions, Texas Instruments, and others. Author of more than 300 journal and conference papers and 8 textbooks in the area of speech and signal processing, and is coauthor of the textbook Discrete-Time Processing of Speech Signals, IEEE Press, 2000, DSP for In-Vehicle and Mobile Systems, Springer, 2004, and the research monograph Automatic Recognition of Speech in Stressful Environments, published by DoD, 1991, and was lead author of the monograph "The Impact of Speech Under "Stress" on Military Speech Technology," NATO Research and Technology Organization, RTO-TR-10 AC/323(IST)TP/5 (ISBN 92-837-1027-4).
Areas of concentration
Ph.D. Electrical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, July, 1988.
Digital Signal Processing, Speech Processing,
Communications.
Thesis title: Analysis and Compensation of Stressed and Noisy Speech with Application to Robust Automatic Recognition.
Thesis advisor: Mark A. Clements.
Thesis committee chairman: Ronald W. Schafer
M.S. Electrical Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, (with highest honors), December 1983. Digital Signal Processing,
Voice Communications.
B.S. Electrical Engineering Rutgers University, College of Engineering, Dept. of Electrical Engineering, (with highest honors), May, 1982.
Digital Signal Processing,
Communications, and
Biomedical Engineering.
Publications
F. William, A. Sangwan, J.H.L. Hansen, "Automatic Accent Assessment Using Phonetic Mismatch and Human Perception,"IEEE Trans. Audio, Speech and Language Processing, vol. 21, no. 9, pp. 1818-1828, Sept. 2013 2013 - Publication
J.H.L. Hansen, J.-W. Suh, M. R. Leonard,"Leveraging the Speaker and Noise Space for Effective In-Set/Out-of-Set Speaker Recognition," Speech Communication, vol. 55, pp. 769-781, April 2013. [Accepted Jan. 24, 2013] 2013 - Publication
O. Sadjadi, J.H.L. Hansen,"Unsupervised Speech Activity Detection using Voicing Measures and Perceptual Spectral Flux," IEEE Signal Processing Letters, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 197-200, March 2013 [Accepted Dec. 7, 2012] 2013 - Publication
A. Sathyanarayana, J.H.L. Hansen, "Impact of Secondary Tasks on Individual Drivers: Not All Drivers are Created Equally," SAE Inter. Journal on Passenger Cars - Electronic & Electrical Systems, vol. 5, issue 2, pp. 414-420, doi:10.4271/2012-01-0486, Sept. 2012 2012 - Publication
J.-W. Suh, J.H.L. Hansen, "Acoustic Hole Filling for Sparse Enrollment Data using a Cohort Universal Corpus for Speaker Recognition,"Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 131, no. 6, pp. 1515-1528, Feb. 2012 2012 - Publication
A. Das, J.H.L. Hansen, "Phoneme Selective Speech Enhancement using Parametric Estimators and the Mixture Maximum Model: A Unified Approach,"IEEE Trans. Audio, Speech & Language Processing, vol. 20, no. 8, pp. 2265-2279, Oct. 2012 2012 - Publication
J.H.L. Hansen, E. Ruzanski, H. Boril, J.. Meyerhoff, "TEO-based Speaker Stress Assessment using Hybrid Classification and Tracking Schemes," Inter. Journal Speech Technology, vol. 15, issue 3, pp. 295-311,Sept. 2012 2012 - Publication
A. Das, J.H.L. Hansen, "Constrained Iterative Speech Enhancement Using Phonetic Classes,"IEEE Trans. Audio, Speech & Language Processing, a vol. 20, no. 6, pp. 1869-1883, Aug. 2012. 2012 - Publication
Appointments
Department Head and Professor
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
Distinguished University Chair in Telecommunications Engineering
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
Professor
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
Founder and Director
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
Center for Robust Speech Systems
The University of Texas at Dallas [2005–Present]
Center for Robust Speech Systems
Professor
University of Colorado at Boulder [2004–Present]
University of Colorado at Boulder [2004–Present]
Professor
University of Colorado at Boulder [2004–Present]
University of Colorado at Boulder [2004–Present]
Department Chairman
University of Colorado at Boulder [2003–2005]
University of Colorado at Boulder [2003–2005]
Co-Founder and Associate Director
University of Colorado at Boulder [1999–2003]
University of Colorado at Boulder [1999–2003]
Director
University of Colorado at Boulder [1999–2005]
University of Colorado at Boulder [1999–2005]
Associate Professor
University of Colorado at Boulder [1999–2004]
University of Colorado at Boulder [1999–2004]
Additional Information
Technical Review For
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Proposals
- National Science Foundation: Division of Information, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems
- National Science Foundation: Division of Circuits and Signal Processing
- National Science Foundation: Division of Bioengineering & Environmental Systems
- DoD Polygraph Institute
- NRC - Canada
- The Whitaker Foundation
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Journals
- IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, (IEEE-SP)
- IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, (IEEE-ASSP)
- IEEE Transactions on Speech & Audio Processing, (IEEE-SAP)
- IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech & Language Processing, (IEEE-ASLP)
- IEEE Transactions on Communications, (IEEE-Com)
- IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing Letters, (IEEE-SPL)
- IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, (IEEE-BME)
- IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, (IEEE-PAMI)
- Speech Communication
- Information Systems
- The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
- EURASIP Journal of Audio, Speech and Music Processing
- EURASIP Journal of Applied Digital Signal Processing
Conference & Workshop organization
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UTD-IIE Workshop: "Wireless Long Term Evolution: The Connected World".
- 1-day workshop organization (w. H. Minn.), in coorperation with IIE/School of Management; 6 invited talks; 6-member panel; 15student oral/poster session, Oct. 15, 2010.
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Conference Organizer & Technical Program Chairman: IEEE ICASSP-2010.
- Served as Co-Organizer and Technical Program Chair for IEEE ICASSP-2010: International Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing, Dallas, Texas. March 2010 [2100 attendees; 1127 reviewers who completed 9682 blind reviews for 2,855 submitted papers, resulting in 70 oral sessions and 83 poster sessions].
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Biennial Workshop: DSP for In-Vehicle Systems & Safety: General Chair and Organizer, Dallas, Texas, June 26-28, 2009.
- Organized with Technical Program Chair Pinar Boyraz; 50 attendees including Keynote Addresses from Bruce Magladry [Director of Office of Highway Safety, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board -NTSB, Wash. DC], Jon Hankey [Director, Virginia Tech. Transportation Institute - VTTI], Gerhard Schmidt [Harman International, SVOX, Germany]; Panel Speakers: Bruce Magladry, Jon Hankey, Gerhard Schmidt, Hanseok Ko [Korea Univ., South Korea], Kazuya Takeda [Nagoya Univ., Japan].
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UTD-IIE Workshop: "Technologies for Understanding Human Language Technologies".
- 1-day workshop organization with IIE/School of Management; 6 invited talks; 5-member panel; 25 student oral/poster session, Jan. 23, 2009.
- ACL/HCL-08:Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) with Human Language Tech. Conf: Best Papers Award Committee (Short & Long formats), Columbus, Ohio, June 15-20, 2008.
- Biennial Workshop on DSP for In-Vehicle and Mobile Systems: Technical Program Chair and Co-Organizer, Istanbul, Turkey, June 17-19, 2007.
- Biennial Workshop on DSP for In-Vehicle and Mobile Systems: Technical Program Chair and Co-Organizer, Sesembra, Portugal, Sept. 2005.
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SWIM-2004: Special Workshop in Maui - Master Lectures in Speech Processing.
- Served on Organizing Committee. This Workshop brought together 9 of the fathers of the field of speech processing who have helped shape the field over the past 30 years. In addition to the Master Lectures, four paper sessions were also included in the 3 day meeting. Maui, Hawaii, Jan. 10-12, 2004.
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Conference Organizer & General Chairman: ICSLP-2002/Interspeech-2002.
- Organized ICSLP-2002: International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Interspeech-2002). The conference took place over 5 days, with 1100 attendees, 6 tutorials, 2 keynote speakers, and 735 peer reviewed conference papers presented.
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Special Session Organizer: IEEE ICASSP-99.
- Organized Special Session on "Speech Under 'Stress'", for NATO and IEEE Speech Technical Committee. Served as Session Co-Chair with H, Steeneken, for IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Phoenix, Arizona, March 1999.
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Tutorials Chairman, ICASSP-96.
- Organized 8 Tutorials spanning such areas of signal processing as: speech processing, image processing, wireless communications, VLSI DSP chip design, fuzzy logic based signal processing, multi-media DSP. IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing,  Atlanta, Georgia, May 1996.
Inveited Session Chariman
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Session Chairman: Speech Enhancement I.
- EUSIPCO-2010: European Signal Processing Conference, Aalborg, Denmark, Aug. 23-27, 2010.
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Invited Panel Member: Workshop on Child Computer Interfaces
- MIT Media Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass., Nov. 4-5, 2009
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Session Chairman: Expression, Emotion & Personality Recognition.
- ISCA Interspeech-2009, Brighton, UK, Sept. 6-10, 2009.
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Session Chairman: Speaker Diarization & Clustering (SPE-P1).
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Taipei, Taiwan, April 20-25, 2009.
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Session Chairman: Speech Enhancement and Noise Reduction
- INTERSPEECH-2008: Brisbane, Australia, Sept. 2008.
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Session Chairman: Robust Speech Recognition (SPE-L7).
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Las Vegas, NV, March 31-April 4, 2008.
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Session Chairman: Speech Enhancement
- INTERSPEECH-2007: Antwerp, Belguim, Aug. 2007.
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Session Chairman: Audio, Acoustics, and Multi-Sensor Based Systems
- Biennial Workshop on In-Vehicle and Mobile Systems: Istanbul, Turkey, June 17-19, 2007.
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Session Chairman: Decision and Expert Systems
- IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium-2007: Istanbul, Turkey, June 13-15, 2007.
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Session Chairman: Audio & Speech Processing
- IEEE NORSIG-2006: Nordic Signal Processing Symposium, Reykjavik, Iceland, June 7-9, 2006.
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Session Chairman: Speech Enhancement for Noise Suppression.
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Toulouse, France, May 14-20, 2006.
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Session Chairman: Robust Speech Recognition
- INTERSPEECH-2005 / Eurospeech-2005: Lisbon, Portugal, Sept. 2005.
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Session Chairman: Detection and Classification in Automatic Speech Recognition
- INTERSPEECH-2004 / ICSLP-2004: Jeju Island, Korea, Oct. 2004.
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Session Chairman: Audio Signal Processing III Speech Detection and Classification
- IEEE NORSIG-2004: Nordic Signal Processing Symposium, Helsinki, Finland, Friday, June 11, 2004.
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Session Chairman: Advanced Speech Signal Processing in Cars
- ICA-2004 (International Congress on Acoustics): Kyoto, Japan, April 2004.
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Session Chairman: Speech Applications and Systems
- IEEE SWIM-2004 (Special Workshop in Maui) - MISP: Masters in Speech Processing: Maui, Hawaii, Jan. 2004.
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Session Chairman: Speech Recognition: Acoustic Modelling
- INTERSPEECH-2003 / Eurospeech-2003: Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 2003.
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Session Chairman: Speech Recognition: Model Adaptation
- INTERSPEECH-2003 / Eurospeech-2003: Geneva, Switzerland, Sept. 2003.
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Invited Panel Member: In-Vehicle Speech Systems
- IEEE DSP Workshop in Mobile and Vehicular Systems: Nagoya, Japan, April 2003.
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Session Chairman: Dialog Systems.
- IEEE DSP Workshop in Mobile and Vehicular Systems: Nagoya, Japan, April 2003.
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Session Chairman: Speech Recognition: Robust Automatic Speech Recognition.
- EUROSPEECH-2001: Inter. Conf. on Speech Communication and Technology, Aalborg, Denmark, Sept. 2001.
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Session Chairman: Dialog Systems and Speech Input.
- International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Beijing, China, Oct. 2000.
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Session Chairman: Speech Under Stress. (co-Chair with H. Steeneken, TNO The Netherlands)
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Phoenix, Arizona, March 1999.
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Session Chairman: Robust Speech Processing in Adverse Environments.
- International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Sydney, Australia, Oct. 1998.
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Session Chairman: Speech Enhancement.
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Munich, Germany, April 1997.
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Session Chairman: Speech Recognition -- Speaker & Acoustic Adaptation.
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Atlanta, Georgia, May 1996.
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Session Chairman: Speech Enhancement.
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Detroit, Michigan, May 1995.
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Session Chairman: Robust Speech Recognition.
- International Conference on Spoken Language Processing, Yokohama, Japan, September 1994.
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Session Chairman: Keyword Spotting and Related Topics.
- IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Adelaide, Australia, April 1994.
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Session Chairman: Picture Archival and Communications Systems.
- IEEE Symposium on Computer Based Medical Systems, Durham, North Carolina, June 1992.
News Articles
Hansen Earns IEEE Service Award
Dr. John Hansen, professor of electrical engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas, will be honored with the 2021 Leo L. Beranek Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society for his service and leadership in the professional organization.
Speech Technology Researcher Recognized by Peers
Dr. John H.L. Hansen of UT Dallas has been named a fellow of the International Speech Communication Association, which recognized him for “significant contributions to the field of speech communication science and technology.” It is one of the organization’s highest honors. Hansen’s research interests span the areas of digital speech processing, speaker trait assessment, speech and speaker recognition, and human-computer interaction. But perhaps most important is the very practical twist he’s brought to his work.
Dr. John Hansen Named Head of EE Department At Jonsson School of Engineering & Computer Science
Dr. John H. L. Hansen, chairman of the Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has been named head of the Electrical Engineering Department in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD). He will assume his new responsibilities in the fall semester. In announcing the appointment, Jonsson School Dean Dr. Bob Helms described Hansen as a “world-class scholar, educator, leader and administrator” who would help Jonsson “accelerate its move toward attaining tier one status as one of the top 50 engineering schools in the United States.”
Speech Systems Team Receives Grant for Cochlear Implant Project
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, approximately 15 percent of adults report some degree of hearing loss. It’s the third-most common chronic physical ailment, twice as prevalent as diabetes or cancer.Those kinds of numbers haunt Dr. John Hansen, professor of electrical and computer engineering at The University of Texas at Dallas.
“Losing your hearing disconnects you from family, friends and society,” said Hansen, who holds the Distinguished Chair in Telecommunications in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. “That’s why we need to make sure we are providing the best hearing devices we can.”
NSF Grants Dr. John Hansen $1.2 Million For Audio Recovery From The Apollo Missions
Dr. John Hansen was awarded $1,211,500 from the National Science Foundation for his research on Developing a Multi-Channel Naturalistic Audio Corpora for the Natural Language Processing Research Community. Dr. Hansen’s team is developing an audio resource of real-world speech communications of one of history’s greatest scientific and technical accomplishments – the NASA Apollo missions. The project includes creating the framework needed to recover and make available the entire team communications.