People

Biography

After studying mathematical biology at the University of Toronto and the University of Chicago (where he explored computer simulation as a tool for studying the evolution of DNA), Roland developed an interest in natural language. In 1993, he received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from McGill University, with a thesis on applying decision trees to the understanding of spoken phrases.

In the course of his research career, Roland has studied a diverse set of problems in natural language processing, including automatic speech recognition, machine dialogue, speaker verification/identification, speech understanding, letter-to-sound systems, phoneme-based topic spotting, and most recently, machine translation. He has contributed new ideas to several of these areas, including the cache language model for speech recognition and eigenvoices for speaker adaptation and speaker verification/identification.

After working at the Centre de recherche informatique de Montréal (CRIM) as both a researcher and a senior researcher between 1992 and 1996, Roland held research and development positions with the Panasonic Speech Technology Laboratory in Santa Barbara, California (October 1996 to June 2004). While at this laboratory, Roland led several projects, including one that resulted in the first demonstration of a voice-controlled interactive TV at a major commercial exhibition (Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, January 2000). He has been with the LTRC since July 2004. A citizen of Canada and Germany, Roland holds 21 US patents. He has been a member of the IEEE Speech Technical Committee since November 2002.

Additional Information

• Research Project Portfolio:
  • PORTAGE: Machine Learning for Translation