Prof. Takayuki Arai, Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Sophia University, Japan gave a ISCA Distinguished Lecture on Introduction to Speech Science with Vocal-tract Models on 19 August organized by the Speech Processing Laboratory.

Dr. Klein has highlighted some of his interest areas in applied projects viz., attention deficits (in ADHD), the development of game-like tasks for repairing and assessing the networks of attention, safety (while driving and pilot fatigue), using eye monitoring to draw conclusions about attention in every-day activities (reading, looking at art and looking at money) etc. 

In his  lecture Prof. Arai gave an introduction to speech science and acoustic phonetics using different types of physical models. The lung model imitates the human respiratory system and produces glottal sounds. And several other types of vocal-tract models demonstrate vowel production. From straight and static through bent and dynamic, the style of the models varies greatly. Each static model has a unique vocal tract configuration which produces a single vowel, while the configuration of the dynamic models may be manipulated manually, producing multiple vowels. Then, extended models demonstrate different types of consonants: plosives, fricatives, nasals, and approximants. Moveable lips simulate bilabial sounds; a model with a nasal cavity simulates nasal consonants; and dynamic models simulate approximants. Some advanced topics were also discussed.

Prof. Takayuki Arai obtained his Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Sophia University, Tokyo in 1994.  Prior to joining Sophia University he had worked in several places like Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology, Portland; International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.His research interests include signal processing, acoustics, speech and hearing sciences, spoken language processing, and acoustic phonetics.