BELLEVUE, Washington, March 23, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- VoiceBox Technologies, a global provider of contextual voice technologies and natural language understanding (NLU) for automotive, mobile and IoT products, today announced the formation of a Scientific Advisory Board. The diverse, world-class roster represents VoiceBox's continued investment in its broader strategy to become a unifying interface for the Internet of Things.
Board members include distinguished researchers in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI), multimodal human-computer interaction, biometrics, speech recognition, natural language understanding and dialog processing technologies.
"Our vision of a common, intelligent interface – multi-device, cross-device and multi-user – integrates exciting new technologies to supplement our comprehensive, advantaged voice offerings," said Mike Kennewick, VoiceBox's CEO. "By integrating world-renowned talent regardless of location, we are able to build a team the expertise of which rivals the largest companies in our industry."
Providing insight and direction to VoiceBox's technology initiatives, the Advisory Board will build on the company's rapid growth and pioneering work in contextual voice NLU which has been acknowledged by IEEE as among the most impactful technology Intellectual Property (IP) in the world. The Board will also deliver general access to a steady stream of esteemed colleagues and promising job candidates.
With 10-15 Advisory Board members expected by the end of 2016, initial members include:
Luke Zettlemoyer
Dr. Luke Zettlemoyer is Assistant Professor in the Computer Science & Engineering department at the University of Washington. He does research in natural language processing, with a focus on empirical computational semantics. Honors include paper awards at UAI and ACL, selection to the DARPA CSSG, an NSF CAREER Award, and an Allen Distinguished Investigator Award. Zettlemoyer received his PhD from MIT and was a postdoc at the University of Edinburgh.
Shri Narayanan
Dr. Shrikanth (Shri) Narayanan is Andrew J. Viterbi Professor of Engineering at the University of Southern California, where he is Professor of Electrical Engineering, and jointly in Computer Science, Linguistics, Psychology, Neuroscience and Pediatrics, and Director of the Ming Hsieh Institute. His research focuses on human-centered information processing and communication technologies.
David Traum
Dr. David Traum is the director of Natural Language Research at the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) and a Research Faculty member of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Southern California (USC). He leads the Natural Language Dialogue Group at ICT, which currently consists of seven Ph.D.s, and several students. Traum's research focuses on Dialogue Communication between Human and Artificial Agents.
Dan Weld
Dr. Daniel S. Weld is Thomas J. Cable / WRF Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington and an Entrepreneurial Faculty Fellow. His research focuses on intelligent control of crowdsourcing. After formative education at Phillips Academy, he received bachelor's degrees in both CS and Biochemistry at Yale University in 1982 and a Ph.D. from the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1988.
About VoiceBox Technologies Corporation
VoiceBox provides one-stop-shopping for companies looking to voice-enable products and solutions; offering enhanced Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Text to Speech (TTS) technologies together with a full range of development, testing and data services for the Internet of Things (IoT). VoiceBox ships with Samsung, Toyota, Fiat, Dodge, Chrysler, Maserati, Mercedes, Smart Car, Renault, Mazda, Subaru and Tom-Tom in 23 languages across 3 continents. More information is available at http://www.voicebox.com.
