Professor Jon Barker
PhD
Department of Computer Science
Personal Chair
Director of PGT Studies
Member of the Speech and Hearing (SpandH) research group

+44 114 222 1824
Full contact details
Department of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
- Profile
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Professor Jon Barker is a Reader in Computer Science in the Speech and Hearing Research Group. He has a first degree in Electrical and Information Sciences from Cambridge University, UK.
After receiving a PhD from the University of Sheffield in 1999, he worked for some time at GIPSA-lab, Grenoble and IDIAP research institute in Switzerland before returning to Sheffield where he has had a permanent post since 2002.
- Research interests
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Professor Barker’s research interests are focused around machine listening and the computational modelling of human hearing. A recent focus has been on modelling speech intelligibility, ie can we predict whether or not a speech signal will be intelligible to a given listener?
This understanding will help us produce better signal processing for application such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. Another strand of his work is about taking insights gained from human auditory perception and using them to engineer robust automatic speech processing systems.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Launching the first “Clarity” Machine Learning Challenge to revolutionise hearing device processing. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148(4), 2711-2711.
- Lexical frequency effects in English and Spanish word misperceptions.. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 145(2), EL136-EL141. View this article in WRRO
- A corpus of audio-visual Lombard speech with frontal and profile views. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 143(6), 523-529. View this article in WRRO
- The impact of the Lombard effect on audio and visual speech recognition systems. Speech Communication, 100, 58-68. View this article in WRRO
- The impact of automatic exaggeration of the visual articulatory features of a talker on the intelligibility of spectrally distorted speech. Speech Communication, 95, 127-136. View this article in WRRO
- An analysis of environment, microphone and data simulation mismatches in robust speech recognition. Computer Speech & Language, 46, 535-557. View this article in WRRO
- The third ‘CHiME’ speech separation and recognition challenge: Analysis and outcomes. Computer Speech and Language, 46, 605-626. View this article in WRRO
- Guest Editorial for the special issue on Multi-Microphone Speech Recognition in Everyday Environments. Computer Speech & Language. View this article in WRRO
- Spectral Reconstruction and Noise Model Estimation Based on a Masking Model for Noise Robust Speech Recognition. Circuits, Systems, and Signal Processing. View this article in WRRO
- A corpus of noise-induced word misperceptions for English.. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140(5), EL458-EL463. View this article in WRRO
- An Overview, 137-172.
- The second 'CHiME' speech separation and recognition challenge: An overview of challenge systems and outcomes. 2013 IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding, ASRU 2013 - Proceedings, 162-167.
- MMSE-based missing-feature reconstruction with temporal modeling for robust speech recognition. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, 21(3), 624-635.
- Speech spectral envelope enhancement by HMM-based analysis/resynthesis. IEEE Signal Processing Letters, 20(6), 563-566.
- A hearing-inspired approach for distant-microphone speech recognition in the presence of multiple sources. Computer Speech and Language.
- Special issue on speech separation and recognition in multisource environments. Computer Speech and Language.
- The PASCAL CHiME speech separation and recognition challenge. Computer Speech and Language.
- Speech fragment decoding techniques for simultaneous speaker identification and speech recognition. COMPUT SPEECH LANG, 24(1), 94-111.
- Energetic and Informational Masking Effects in an Audiovisual Speech Recognition System. IEEE T AUDIO SPEECH, 17(3), 446-458.
- Stream weight estimation for multistream audio-visual speech recognition in a multispeaker environment. SPEECH COMMUN, 50(4), 337-353.
- The foreign language cocktail party problem: Energetic and informational masking effects in non-native speech perception.. J Acoust Soc Am, 123(1), 414-427.
- Exploiting correlogram structure for robust speech recognition with multiple speech sources. SPEECH COMMUN, 49(12), 874-891. View this article in WRRO
- Modelling speaker intelligibility in noise. SPEECH COMMUN, 49(5), 402-417.
- An automatic speech recognition system based on the scene analysis account of auditory perception. SPEECH COMMUN, 49(5), 384-401.
- An audio-visual corpus for speech perception and automatic speech recognition.. J Acoust Soc Am, 120(5 Pt 1), 2421-2424.
- Mask estimation for missing data speech recognition based on statistics of binaural interaction. IEEE T AUDIO SPEECH, 14(1), 58-67.
- Decoding speech in the presence of other sources. Speech Communication, 45, 5-25.
- Decoding speech in the presence of other sources. SPEECH COMMUN, 45(1), 5-25.
- Techniques for handling convolutional distortion with 'missing data' automatic speech recognition. SPEECH COMMUN, 43(1-2), 123-142.
- Is the sine-wave speech cocktail party worth attending?. Speech Communication, 27, 159-174.
- Modeling the recognition of sine-wave sentences. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 100, 2682-2682.
Chapters
- The CHiME Challenges: Robust Speech Recognition in Everyday Environments, New Era for Robust Speech Recognition (pp. 327-344). Springer International Publishing
- Multichannel Spatial Clustering Using Model-Based Source Separation, New Era for Robust Speech Recognition (pp. 51-77). Springer International Publishing
- Missing Data Techniques: Recognition with Incomplete Spectrograms In Virtanen T, Singh R & Raj B (Ed.), Techniques for Noise Robustness in Automatic Speech Recognition (pp. 371-398). Wiley
Conference proceedings papers
- On End-to-end Multi-channel Time Domain Speech Separation in Reverberant Environments. ICASSP 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 4 May 2020 - 8 May 2020.
- Source Domain Data Selection for Improved Transfer Learning Targeting Dysarthric Speech Recognition. ICASSP 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 4 May 2020 - 8 May 2020. View this article in WRRO
- Exploring Appropriate Acoustic and Language Modelling Choices for Continuous Dysarthric Speech Recognition. ICASSP 2020 - 2020 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 4 May 2020 - 8 May 2020. View this article in WRRO
- Phonetic Analysis of Dysarthric Speech Tempo and Applications to Robust Personalised Dysarthric Speech Recognition. ICASSP 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 12 May 2019 - 17 May 2019.
- Exploring the use of group delay for generalised VTS based noise compensation. 2018 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing Proceedings, 15 April 2018 - 20 April 2018. View this article in WRRO
- Robust Source-Filter Separation of Speech Signal in the Phase Domain. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association View this article in WRRO
- Statistical normalisation of phase-based feature representation for robust speech recognition. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 5 March 2017 - 9 March 2017. View this article in WRRO
- A Data Driven Approach to Audiovisual Speech Mapping (pp 331-342)
- View this article in WRRO
- Exploiting synchrony spectra and deep neural networks for noise-robust automatic speech recognition. 2015 IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding (ASRU), 13 December 2015 - 17 December 2015. View this article in WRRO
- Chime-home: A dataset for sound source recognition in a domestic environment. 2015 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics (WASPAA), 18 October 2015 - 21 October 2015.
- The third ‘CHiME’ speech separation and recognition challenge: Dataset, task and baselines. 2015 IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding (ASRU), 13 December 2015 - 17 December 2015.
- Long-Term Statistical Feature Extraction from Speech Signal and Its Application in Emotion Recognition (pp 173-184)
- Combining missing-data reconstruction and uncertainty decoding for robust speech recognition. ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings (pp 4693-4696)
- A pitch based noise estimation technique for robust speech recognition with missing data. ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings (pp 4808-4811)
- Robust automatic transcription of english speech corpora. 2010 8th International Conference on Communications, COMM 2010 (pp 79-82)
- Integrating Hidden Markov Model and PRAAT: A toolbox for robust automatic speech transcription. Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, Vol. 7745
- Missing data speech recognition in reverberant conditions. ICASSP, IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing - Proceedings, Vol. 1
- Simulating Realistically-Spatialised Simultaneous Speech Using Video-Driven Speaker Detection and the CHiME-5 Dataset. Interspeech 2020
- Automatic Lyric Transcription from Karaoke Vocal Tracks: Resources and a Baseline System. Interspeech 2019
- The Fifth 'CHiME' Speech Separation and Recognition Challenge: Dataset, Task and Baselines. Interspeech 2018
- DNN Driven Speaker Independent Audio-Visual Mask Estimation for Speech Separation. Interspeech 2018
- On the Usefulness of the Speech Phase Spectrum for Pitch Extraction. Interspeech 2018 View this article in WRRO
- Channel Compensation in the Generalised Vector Taylor Series Approach to Robust ASR. Interspeech 2017 View this article in WRRO
- Binary Mask Estimation Strategies for Constrained Imputation-Based Speech Enhancement. Interspeech 2017
- Use of Generalised Nonlinearity in Vector Taylor Series Noise Compensation for Robust Speech Recognition. Interspeech 2016 View this article in WRRO
- Multichannel Spatial Clustering for Robust Far-Field Automatic Speech Recognition in Mismatched Conditions. Interspeech 2016
- Language Effects in Noise-Induced Word Misperceptions. Interspeech 2016
- Misperceptions Arising from Speech-in-Babble Interactions. Interspeech 2016
- Data compression techniques in image compression for multimedia systems. Southcon/96 Conference Record
- View this article in WRRO
Posters
Theses / Dissertations
Other
- Launching the first “Clarity” Machine Learning Challenge to revolutionise hearing device processing. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 148(4), 2711-2711.
- Grants
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Current grants
- Challenges to Revolutionise Hearing Device Processing, EPSRC, 10/2019 to 09/2024, £480,416, as PI
- UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Speech and Language Technologies and their Applications, EPSRC, 04/2019 to 09/2027, £5,508,850, as Co-PI
- TAPAS: Training Network on Automatic Processing of PAthological Speech, EC H2020, 11/2017 to 10/2021, £468,000, as Co-PI
Previous grants
- Deep learning of articulatory-based representations of dysarthric speech, Google, 02/2016 to 01/2017, £46,624, as Co-PI
- Towards visually-driven speech enhancement for cognitively-inspired multi-modal hearing-aid devices (AV-COGHEAR), EPSRC, 10/2015 to 09/2018, £125,493, as PI
- INSPIRE: Investigating Speech In Real Environments, EC FP7, 01/2012 to 12/2015, £308,473, as PI
- ACAS: Analysis of Complex Acoustic Scenes, EPSRC, 07/2010 to 09/2010, £9,978, as PI
- CHIME: Computational Hearing in Multisource Environments, EPSRC, 06/2009 to 05/2012, £326,245, as PI
- Audio-Visual Speech Recognition in the Presence of Non-Stationary Noise, EPSRC, 02/2005 to 05/2007, £116,853, as PI
- Professional activities
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- Member of the Speech and Hearing research group
- Co-founder of the CHiME series of International Workshops and Robust Speech Recognition Evaluations, 2011 onwards.
- EURASIP Best Paper Award, 2009; for best paper in Speech Communication during 2005.
- ISCA Best Paper Award, 2008; for best paper in Speech Communication 2005-2007.