Dr Stuart Cunningham, BEng, PhD

Department of Human Communication Sciences
The University of Sheffield
31 Claremont Crescent
Sheffield
S10 2TA
UK



Tel: +44 (0) 114 222 2421
Fax: +44 (0) 114 273 0547

email : s.cunningham@sheffield.ac.uk

Biography

I joined the department as a lecturer in December 2003 from Barnsley District General Hospital where I worked as a research associate in the department of Medical Physics and Clinical Engineering.

Previously I was employed as a research associate in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Sheffield studying the perception of filtered speech.

I obtained a BEng in Software Engineering and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Sheffield.

Research interests

• Robust automatic speech recognition.
• The use of speech technology in assistive technology and speech and language therapy.
• Auditory-inspired representations of speech signals and their application in automatic speech recognition.
• The perception of speech in adverse acoustic conditions.

Current projects

• Speech-driven Environmental Control Systems, with Mark Hawley (PI, Barnsley Hospital/University of Sheffield), Phil Green and Pam Enderby (the University of Sheffield); Toby Churchill Ltd.; XoVox Communications Ltd.; and Medipex Ltd. Funded by Department of Health (Health Technology Devices programme). Mar 06 - Dec 09.
• Social Engagement with Robots and Agents (SERA) EU FP7 STREP. (with Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, University of Twente, and Universität Duisburg-Essen). Local PI Peter Wallis (DCS), CIs Roger Moore and Mark Hawley. Jan 09 - Dec 11.

Collaborators

• Martin Cooke, Jon Barker and Phil Green, Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield.
• Mark Hawley, Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust/ Universty of Sheffield.
• Pam Enderby, School of Health and Related Research The University of Shefield.

Key publications

1. Herrmann, F., Whiteside, S. and Cunningham, S. (2009) An acoustic investigation into coarticulation and speech motor control: high vs. low frequency syllables, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, 4,060007.
2. Hawley, M.S., Enderby, P., Green, P.D., Cunningham, S.P., Brownsell, S. Carmichael, J., Parker, M., Hatzis, A., O’Neill, P., and Palmer, R. (2007) A speech-controlled environmental control system for people with severe dysarthria, Medical Engineering & Physics, 29, 586-593.
3. Cooke, M. P., Barker, J., Cunningham, S. P. and Shao, X. (2006) An audio-visual corpus for speech perception and automatic speech recognition, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 120: 2421-2424.
4. Parker, M., Cunningham, S.P., Enderby, P., Hawley, M.E., and Green, P.D. (2006) Automatic speech recognition and training for severely dysarthric users of assistive technology – The STARDUST project, Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics, 20, 149-156.
5. Palmer, R., Enderby, P., and Cunningham, S.P. (2004) The effect of three practice conditions on the consistency of chronic dysarthric speech, Journal of Medical Speech and Language Pathology, 12, 183-189.
6. Cunningham, S.P. (2003) Modelling the recognition of band-pass filtered speech, Doctoral Thesis, Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield

25 January 2012