Dr Bob Damper

Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton
Email: rid@ecs.soton.ac.uk
Web: click here

Bob Damper obtained his MSc in biophysics in 1973 and PhD in electrical engineering in 1979, both from the University of London. He also holds the Diploma of Imperial College, London, in electrical engineering. After a period lecturing in electrical engineering at the University of Abertay, he was appointed Lecturer in Electronics at the University of Southampton in 1980, Senior Lecturer in 1989 and Reader in 1998. He heads the ISIS Research Group where he pursues his research interests in signal and pattern processing, speech science and technology, rehabilitation engineering, neural computation and systems neuroscience, cognitive modelling, biologically-inspired robotics and intelligent systems engineering. Current teaching duties are CM317 Artificial Intelligence and EZ404/604 Artificial Intelligence. He has published more than 200 research articles and reports. He was co-editor of Multimedia Technologies and Future Applications (1994), author of the undergraduate text Introduction to Discrete-Time Signals and Systems (1995), and edited the collection Data-Driven Methods in Speech Synthesis (2001). Click here to see a (mostly complete) list of publications.

Dr. Damper is a Senior Member of the IEEE (USA), a Chartered Engineer and a Chartered Physicist, a Fellow of the Institution of Electrical Engineers and of the Institute of Physics, a member of the Acoustical Society of America, and a founder member of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). He is also a member of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computational Phonology. Bob is on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Speech Technology and was on the local organising committee of the recent 4th ISCA Speech Synthesis Workshop held in Pitlochry, Scotland.

Bob is chairing the EPSRC/BBSRC International Workshop Biologically-Inspired Robotics: The Legacy of W. Grey Walter which is being held at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol from August 14 to 16, 2002. The workshop will commemorate the 25th anniversary of Grey Walter's death, focussing on his pioneering work in cybernetics and artificial life, on the many important and exciting developments in the field since his death, on recent trends in biologically-inspired robotics, and the potential of the field for the future. An outstanding line-up of world-class practitioners has been assembled to give invited talks.

Dr Damper is active in legal work as an expert in forensic speech analysis. He is a member of the International Association for Forensic Linguistics and is listed in the UK Register of Expert Witnesses. Particular specialisms are transcriptions of contested audio recordings and professional opinions on speaker identity on audio recordings.