|
Dr Fisseha Mekuria and Professor Etienne Barnard |
Two researchers from the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have been awarded Google Research Awards.
Professor Etienne Barnard, a well-known researcher in the field of human language technologies (HLT) at the CSIR and Dr Fisseha Mekuria, internationally renowned for his research into wireless and mobile communication platforms and systems, join a group of elite researchers at world-class, full-time tertiary education facilities whose research efforts have been identified for support as part of Google's worldwide efforts to develop the most advanced and usable methods for information access. The combined value amounts to R1.2 million.
The purpose of the Google Research Awards programme is to facilitate more interaction between Google and academia, aimed at improving information access and also nurturing stronger relations and partnerships between universities and Google in diverse areas ranging from machine learning, natural language processing, mobile computing, speech and human-computer interaction, and others.
Barnard holds an academic position at the North-West University while Mekuria was Professor of Wireless Communication Systems at the Faculty of Computing and IT (CIT) at the Makerere University in Uganda before joining the CSIR earlier this year. As such, both researchers plan to use a significant part of their awards for the support of students at these universities.
Voice-based information access
Barnard's project, titled 'Tone-marked pronunciation dictionaries for the Southern Bantu languages', targets voice-based information access. He explains that most languages in the Bantu language family are tone languages that use tone to distinguish words. HLT applications, such as speech-driven, telephone-based information systems, rely on text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) to create spoken responses by computer, and automatic speech recognition (ASR) that is a machine-driven technology by which natural speech is interpreted. Both high-quality TTS and large-vocabulary ASR for the Southern Bantu languages therefore require pronunciation dictionaries with relevant tone information.
Pronunciation dictionaries are important tools that list the expected pronunciations of words. During the current project, tonal values associated with each syllable (the building blocks of each word) will be added to the standard pronunciation rules that occur in dictionaries.
Barnard proposes to use a variety of mechanisms, including machine-learning techniques, cross-language induction and conventional manual transcription to create such tone dictionaries for the Sotho languages (Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho and Setswana).
The relevance and accuracy of these dictionaries will then be verified through the development of multilingual ASR and TTS systems utilising the dictionaries. The goals of the research are to gain a better understanding of the tonal regularities of the various classes of words in these languages, to create tone-marked pronunciation dictionaries that can be used for TTS and ASR, and to create multilingual TTS and ASR systems, using these dictionaries as well as other cross-language porting techniques.
Barnard proposes to use the Google Research Award to support a full-time student for two years to participate in this research effort. In addition, both he and the student will travel to the US to collaborate with US researchers and attend international conferences.
For the duration of the project, Barnard will work closely with speech technologists at Google in order to discuss research directions, provide progress updates and engage in knowledge transfer. His immediate plans are to develop a number of test cases that can be used to assess the progress of the project towards wide-ranging and reliable tonal dictionaries.
Mobile computing - the future is looking back at us
Mekuria is a Principal Researcher who currently focuses on secure mobile computing platforms, systems and services as part of the CSIR's information security research capacity. His Google project addresses the issue of the development of a localised mobile content and service provider sector in a formal and competitive way. Mekuria says, "The mobile phone has become a powerful portable multimedia computer, and is an important link in the convergence of information and communications technologies and services for many people in the developing world. Growth in mobile telephone usage in Africa has been rapid in the past 10 years. Africa mobile subscribers outnumber the fixed lines 10:1 in a number of countries. According to statistics provided by the Groupe Speciale Mobile Association (GSMA) in 2007, there are about 210 million people who use mobile phones and over 120 operators exist in the 53 African countries. In addition, recent terminal technologies are adding affordability, reach and ever-increasing capabilities, in a world where everything is going mobile, digital and adaptive."
"However," he says, "To maintain the mobile technology and services growth in Africa and migrate towards more relevant data services such as mobile-health, mobile-learning, mobile payment and so on, we need to complement the voice and SMS services, with mobile web services. The challenges to be addressed can be classified into affordable infrastructure, reliability and security features, and human resources to develop the necessary localised services and content."
According to Mekuria, the emergence of a local mobile content and service provider sector in Africa, supported by incubation schemes, is a crucial milestone for employment creation and economic development, as a spin-off of the explosive growth of mobile technology and services in the continent.
He says, "The project will entail the development of a 'Mobile Computing and Application Software Development (MCASD)' curriculum, a short course version of which is being developed, and will run in different African universities starting with Makerere University. The next two aspects include the establishment of a mobile laboratory for research, usability testing and prototyping of new secure mobile applications. A research group, in collaboration with local universities, in mobile computing technology and services, will guarantee the sustainability and future development of the project." Mekuria has lead a number of research projects for the mobile industry on innovative mobile technology and secure mobile services for emerging African markets. During his time as a senior research scientist with the Ericsson Mobile Communications R&D Lab in Sweden, he has developed 12 US and European patents in the areas of wireless and mobile communication platforms and systems.
He believes that developing a local centre of excellence for research and development of innovative and secure mobile services in a regional context is key.
"The success of such a programme will guarantee successful diffusion and continued growth of the mobile technology and services on the African continent. Stakeholders such as network and service providers, regulatory authorities, research institutions and the business community have an important role to play. The mobile industry and Google are interested to collaborate with local research and development initiatives in emerging African countries. The research possibilities are enormous and there is a major potential to tap into the four billion subscriber mobile services market in the world."
Enquiries: CSIR Communication
|
