Articulation and Intelligibility

​Jont B. Allen received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1966, and his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968 and 1970, respectively. After graduation he joined Bell Laboratories, and was in the Acoustics Research Department in Murray Hill, NJ, from 1974–1996, as a distinguished member of technical staff. Since 1996 Dr. Allen has been a Technology Leader at AT&T Labs-Research. Since Aug. 2003, Allen is an Associate Professor in ECE, at the University of Illinois, and on the research staff of the Beckman Inst., Urbana IL. During his 32 year AT&T Bell Labs (and later AT&T Labs) career Dr. Allen has specialized in auditory signal processing. In the last 10 years he has concentrated on the problem of human speech recognition. His expertise spans the areas of signal processing, physical acoustics, cochlearmodeling, auditory neurophysiology, auditory psychophysics, and human speech recognition. Dr. Allen is a fellow (May 1981) of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and fellow ( January 1985) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE). In 1986 he was awarded the IEEE Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (ASSP) Society Meritorious Service Award, and in 2000 received an IEEE Third Millennium Medal. He is a past member of the Executive Council of the ASA, the Administration Committee (ADCOM) of the IEEE ASSP, has served as Editor of the ASSP Transactions, as Chairman of the Publication Board of the ASSP Society, as General Chairman of the International Conference on ASSP (ICASSP-1988), and on numerous committees of both the ASA and the ASSP. He is presently a member of ASA Publications Policy Board. He has organized several workshops and 124 THE AUTHOR conferences on hearing research and signal processing. In 1984 he received funding from NIH to host the 2d International Mechanics of Hearing Workshop. He has a strong interest in electronic publications and has produced several CDROM publications, including suggesting and then overseeing technical details of the publication of the J. Acoust. Soc. Am. in DjVu format, and developed the first subject classification system for the IEEE Transactions of the ASSP, as well as the ASSP Magazine. In 1986–88 Dr. Allen participated in the development of the AT&T multiband compression hearing aid, later sold under the ReSound and Danavox name, and served as a member of the ReSound and SoundID Scientific advisory boards. In 1990 he was an Osher Fellow at the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. In 1991–92 he served as an International Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Signal Processing Society. In 1993 he served on the Dean’s Advisory Council at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1994 he spent 5 weeks as Visiting Scientist and Distinguished Lecturer at the University of Calgary. Since 1987 he has been an Adjunct Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Otolaryngology at Columbia University, and on the CUNY speech and Hearing Faculty (Adjunct). In 2000 he received the IEEE Millennium Award, and in 2004, an IBM faculty award. Dr. Allen has more than 90 publications (36 peer reviewed) and 16 patents in the areas of speech noise reduction, speech and audio coding, and hearing aids.

• Introduction.- Articulation.- Intelligibility.- Discussion with Historical Context.