Following a tradition that started in 1989, a medal is awarded at every Eurospeech conference, for significant scientific achievement in the field of speech communication, science and technology. Previous recipients of the medal have been Gunnar Fant, Jim Flanagan, Adrian Fourcin, Ken Stevens, Mario Rossi and Fred Jelinek.
This year ISCA is proud to award Professor Louis Pols of the University of Amsterdam, the 2001 ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement.
Louis has been chosen to receive this honour for his significant contribution to a broad spectrum of subjects, including speech analysis, speech perception, text-to-speech synthesis and synthesis systems evaluation.
Born in Tiel, the Netherlands, Louis started as a young graduate of physics at the Technological University of Delft. In 1964, he took his first research position in speech, under the guidance of Professor Plomp at the TNO-Institute for Perception in Soesterber degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1977, defending his thesis on the "Spectral analysis and identification of Dutch vowels in monosyllabic words". After eighteen years of research at TNO, including a one-year stay in the USA at the former Speech Communication Research Lab (SCRL) in Santa Barbara and the former AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, he was appointed full professor in Phonetic Sciences at the University of Amsterdam and Director of the Institute of Phonetic Sciences in 1982 - posts that he still holds today.
As head of Phonetic Sciences for almost twenty years, Louis has carried out and guided research in a wide range of topics, resulting in twenty-one dissertations and numerous publications in respected international journals, conferences and books. His work has contributed substantially to the understanding of several aspects of speech production and perception, as well as to the development of high quality text-to-speech systems and the establishment of measures for speech quality evaluation.
In particular, Louis' analysis of the speech signal has focused on vowel and consonant identification, spectro-temporal features, variability, the structure of vowel systems and other aspects. His research into speech perception has included the dynamic aspects of speech, perceived prominence, reduction phenomena and speech efficiency. His work on speech synthesis has concentrated on improving speech quality, especially for Dutch, and on the introduction of concrete procedures and objective measures for the evaluation of synthesis systems.
Louis is very well known and respected in the scientific community both through his scientific work and through his active participation in conferences, workshops and other events related to speech. Eurospeech has benefited greatly from his valuable contributions, as well as his role as board member and then President of ESCA from 1993 to 1997. Also, as well as appearing at the large and prestigious international conferences, Louis can often be found at smaller and less well known events, promoting the furtherance of speech science and technology, both with his presentations, and as an active and individual participant in discussion.
In acknowledgment of an outstanding contribution to speech science and technology, the International Speech Communication Association is happy to present Professor Louis Pols with the 2001 ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement.