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Promotion Dossier

Dr. Veton Kpuska

Associate Professor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

College of Engineering

Florida Institute of Technology

November 2009

Promotion Dossier

Table of Contents

Promotion Dossier

Kpuska

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Table of ContentsPromotion DossieriContact InformationivVeton Z. Kpuska, PhDivAssociate ProfessorivPrefaceviSummary Dossier Material1Summary of Accomplishments2Teaching and Related Activities2Scholarly Activities and Research5Publications:5Research:6Software and Hardware Development6Funding6Integration of Students in the Research7Service Activities11Brief History of the Candidate13Main Dossier Material15Teaching and Related Activities17Course Instruction and Development17Graduate Level Course Development17Undergraduate Level Course Development18Course Instruction19Courses Taught in Reverse-Chronological Order19Innovative Pedagogical Techniques28Teaching Material28Teaching Style28Collaboration with Industry29Text Book and Laboratory Material30Advising Activities31Outside Funding for Curriculum Development & Laboratories33Research and Scholarly Activities35NSF Grants36Patents38Collaboration with Industry38Software Application - PowerPoint Commander40Proposal Activities41List of Proposals41Patents43Journal Publications43Conference Publications44Public Technical Reports46Service Activities48uCollaborator Coalition48Conferences and Related Activities48Reviewing49Advising49Committees50Outreach50CBD Board of Directors50Recruiting Students50A1. RsumA1.1OBJECTIVE:A1.1EDUCATION:A1.1FELLOWSHIPS AND HONORSA1.1EMPLOYMENT:A1.2COMPUTER EXPERIENCE:A1.9PATENTS:A1.9JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS:A1.9CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS:A1.10PUBLIC REPORTS:A1.12PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIPS:A1.12SPECIAL SKILLS:A1.12A2. Supporting Documentation for Teaching and Related ActivitiesA2.1Graduate Courses Promotion AdA2.3Written Text Book ChaptersA2.5ECE 3552 & 4553 Multifarious Systems 1 & 2 Laboratory MaterialA2.7ECE 3551 & 3552 Microcomputer Systems 1 &2 Laboratory MaterialA2.9Example Project from ECE 3553A2.11A3. Supporting Documentation for Scholarly and Research Related ActivitiesA3.1Greatest Commercial Potential - "Smart Room" Senior Design 2008.A3.3Best Junior Design- Visual SoundA3.5Best Paper NominationA3.7Proceeding of the 2007 AMLATHEA REU ProgramA3.9AMALTHEA Focus Group Report 2007A3.11A4. Supporting Documentation for Service and Related ActivitiesA4.1NIST Ritch Transcription Workshop 2009A4.3Laser Day 2007A4.5Parent E-Mail of Potential StudentA4.7A5. Department Head Letter of NominationA5.1A6. Letters of Recommendation from Outside ReviewersA6.1Academic ReferencesA6.1References from IndustryA6.2

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Contact Information

Veton Z. Kpuska, PhDAssociate Professor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Room 535, F.W. Olin Engineering Building Complex

Florida Institue of Technology

150 West University Blvd.

Melbourne, FL 32901-6975

USA

Tel.

(321) 674-7183

Fax

(321) 674-8192

E-mail:

[email protected]

www:

http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/web

Promotion Dossier

Contact Information

Promotion Dossier

Preface

This Promotion Dossier is submitted to the Committee on Faculty Promotions as part of Veton Z. Kpuska application to Florida Institute of Technology for his promotion to the rank of Full Professor in the year 2009. The dossier has been prepared according to the 2009 Florida Tech Faculty Handbook.

For the Reviewers' convenience, instructions from the aforementioned handbook have been included in each section of the Dossier and are depicted italicized, portions of which may be emphasized in bold as well as red color to indicate sections that were considered specifically relevant. Also in the electronic copy of the dossier (e.g., pdf format) all sections of the text underlined in blue are hyperlinks linking to the page (www or in the document itself) containing referenced information.

This document is organized into three main sections (I-III) closely following Faculty Handbook guidelines. Section I contains the information summarized concisely related to Teaching, Research and Service activities. In addition a short biography is included for completeness as instructed by the Faculty Handbook. The specifics of summarized activities presented in Section I are covered in Section II. Section III contains Appendixes with selected samples of referenced material closely following guidelines of the Faculty Handbook 2009 (rev. October 09) p. 37-38.

Each section is preceded by a table of content covered in that section highlighting major headings of the material contained therein. It is placed there to help the reader navigate and find the specific information with ease.

It is believed that all sections of this candidacy reflect to a significant degree the promotion criteria based on the FIT policy as specified in section 2.3 - Basis for Appointment and Promotion of aforementioned handbook which states:

"Appointments to the faculty or promotion from one academic rank to another shall be primarily based on education, experience, effective performance and in recognition of special merit in some or all of the activities listed above. The criteria for recognition and evaluation of merit shall become progressively more exacting from lower to higher academic ranks. Promotion to the rank of professor shall be reserved to those members who have demonstrated outstanding performance in their respective fields.

Training and experience are generally recognized in the educational world as basic requirements for appointments and promotions. They are also recognized by Florida Tech, but without the rigidity so often found in automatic promotion plans. Florida Tech subscribes to the belief that alert and progressive faculty members will benefit from their experience, and that graduate study increases knowledge and broadens perspectives. It is definitely expected that each faculty member will endeavor to earn the terminal degree in his/her field.

Under the qualifications indicated above, the university does have a guiding policy on training and experience. It is given here as a general policy to which justified exceptions may be made"

and from the candidates point of view demonstrate a valid basis for this promotion. It is hoped that the Faculty Promotion Committee after careful review of the material will arrive to the same conclusion and hence justify this application and the effort to produce it.

The candidate wants to express his gratitude to the Promotion Committee for taking their time and for their effort in reviewing this material.

Preface

Section

I

Summary Dossier Material

From APPENDIX II. PROMOTION GUIDELINES: COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING of Faculty Handbook 2008 Section College of Engineering Promotion Guidelines page 39: The areas for evaluation are consistent with those specified in a memo of November 2, 1998 from the Associate Provost, and include (1) Teaching and Related Activities, (2) Scholarly Activities and Research, and (3) Service Activities. Scholarly Activities and Research have traditionally been the primary focus for promotion at U.S. Universities; however, "outstanding" performance in the Teaching and Service areas are also important in the present climate of higher education in America and will be given appropriate recognition.

Table of Contents

Summary Dossier Material1

Summary of Accomplishments2

Teaching and Related Activities2

Scholarly Activities and Research5

Publications:5

Research:6

Software and Hardware Development6

Funding6

Integration of Students in the Research7

Service Activities11

Brief History of the Candidate13

Promotion Dossier


KpuskaPage 2

Summary of Accomplishments

I have joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) department (ECE) department at Florida Institute of Technology in January 2003 with the rank of Associate Professor. I am applying for promotion based on my contribution to FIT in teaching, research and service as summarized in following sections.

Teaching and Related Activities

My teaching methodology and practice was recognized by Kerry Bruce Clark Teacher Award 2009. This award is attributed to the achievements presented below.

In spring 2010, FIT is going to be the first University in the world to introduce a new curriculum in Microcomputer Systems 2 utilizing state-of-the-art Texas Instruments DaVinci Embedded Hardware Platform and its BIOS Operating System. For further information please contact Wicks, Cathy, Director of University Programs at TI ([email protected]).

I have introduced a complete set of courses in the ECE graduate program covering the most important aspect of the human communication chain that I call "Speech Vibrations" (http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/SpeechVibrations).

Now, the depth of the offered curriculum at FIT completely covers the fascinating area of human communication chain: from the sound vibrations produced by speech, speech signal processing, pattern recognition as applied to speech modeling, speech recognition, natural language understanding and acoustics of American English. To achieve this goal a total of 4 courses were introduced:

Speech Processing ECE 5525

Speech Recognition ECE 5526

Search and Decoding In Speech RecognitionECE 5527

Acoustics of American English Speech ECE 5528

This newly introduced curriculum, is offered only in prestigious schools like Harvard and MIT. In 2006, Harvard University, a top ranking university in the world, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 5th ranked university in the world, (http://www.arwu.org/rank/2006/ARWU2006_Top100.htm) jointly started offering multidisciplinary program in the area of Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology emphasizing the exact same areas that I have introduced here at FIT in 2003. For more information on this please visit: http://hst.mit.edu/shbt.

At the undergraduate level, I re-designed & re-developed from ground-up new course content and material for the following courses:

Digital State MachinesECE 3541

Microcomputer Systems 1ECE 3551


Multifarious Systems 1ECE 3553


In addition to teaching courses that I have developed, I taught at FIT , the additional courses listed below:

Graduate Level:

Computer Networks 2 ECE 5535

Digital System Design 1ECE 5571


Undergraduate Level:

Hardware Software Integration ECE 2552

Signal and SystemsECE 3222

Computer ArchitectureECE 4551

Electric and Electronic CircuitsECE4991

In the past 7 years at FIT I taught 15 different courses; that turns out to be on average 2.1 new courses per year. I lectured total of 56 times; that is 8 courses per year. In my lectures I apply innovative teaching methodology taking maximum advantage of technology as elaborated next.

My approach to teaching is characterized by a creative and innovative teaching methodology combining state-of-the-art technology enabling to link theory with its practical application. Consequently all my lecture materials for undergraduate and graduate level courses are based on Power Point Presentation notes (e.g., Ch5-Automatic Speech Recognition.ppt) and additional supplemental material that are all WWW accessible. Each class material is publically accessible with the following link: http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/web or http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/eceYYYY where YYYY is class number (e.g., 5527). The first link is the result of an ECE3553 class project in which my student, Todd Alexander, under my direction has developed a web based application that will allow easy maintenance through a Web based interface to all this material.

The total size of teaching material stored and hosted in the university drive is reaching close to 10 GB. Note that this material manly consists of documents containing text (e.g., PowerPoint Presentation Files, Microsoft Documents, html, etc.), source code (e.g., C++, perl, php, C#, etc.), matlab scripts, and other necessary lecture materials (e.g., excel sheets, and databases: mySQL, Microsoft SQL).

Furthermore, this innovative teaching style is focused on maximizing students "exit knowledge" rather than relying only on the test scores. Therefore, in all my courses I require from students to demonstrate mastering of the subject area by developing a practical application combining theory with an appropriate application. The demonstration requires students to verbally defend their work through: (1) Presentation, (2) Detailed Documentation (Microsoft Word, README file, source code, etc.) depicting their work, and (3) Implementation and a demonstration of the project implementation. The following link: Example Project exemplifies a typical project outcome from one of my graduate courses and this link: Example Project2 one from my undergraduate level courses.

Each project is assessed based on detailed instructions for the project requirements that is provided in reference to course participants. This document resides in each corresponding class link under Final Project Requirements document as exemplified in the following link:

http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/ece3551/Final%20Project%20Requirements.doc.

The examination and quality of assessment of the project is conducted by providing each student with at least 30min time slot to present his/her work. Large classes require 2 days of presentation times starting from 8:00 am-12:00 pm, and 1:00pm-6:00pm to complete the examination. Note that registering for a time slot is done with the www based application (see for example http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/web/courses.php#ece3551-projects).

Due to my hands-on approach to teaching and research, consistently I get students to work with me. A number of undergraduate students have joined FIT graduate program solely to work under my direction (e.g., Tudor Klein, Raymond Sastraputera, Brandon Schmitt, Xerxes Beharry, Sean Powers, Ronald Ramdhan).

Notable achievements are:

First Place in the First Annual Analog Devices & University of Massachusetts DSP Contest 2005 (Brian Ramos and Don McMann), http://faculty.uml.edu/Mufeed_Mahd/UML_ADI/photo_fit.htm),

Third Place in IEEE SouthEastCon 2007 Student Hardware Competition: Basketball Robot among 38 Universities (Ronald Ramdhan, Xerxes Beharry & Sean Powers). http://www.southeastcon.org/2007/students/. The 'Patriot' robot is also displayed in Deans Waite Conference Room.

Best Paper Nomination " 2006-472: A MATLAB TOOL FOR SPEECH PROCESSING, ANALYSIS AND RECOGNITION: SAR-LAB " ASEE 2006 (undergraduate co-authors Rogers N., Patel M.),

Best Junior Design 2007 - Visual Audio - (Brandon Schmitt).

Greatest Commercial Potential - "Smart Room" Senior Design 2008. (Matt Hopkins, David Herndon, Patrick Marinelli).

Received distinguished evaluation from undergraduate students (Andrew Stiles, Frederic Gertz and Brandon Schmitt) for directing the research project supported by NSF IIS grant 0647018 REU: Collaborative Research: Advances of Machine Learning in Theory & Applications (AMALTHEA) (see attached relevant portion of the document highlighted in yellow). AMALTHEA Focus Group Report 2007

Tudor Klein who joined the ECE graduate program to work under my guidance has earned internship (2006) with Microsoft and later a fulltime employment (2007) with their Speech Recognition group;

Ronald Ramdhan my undergraduate and now graduate student has earned an internship with Apple and was extended full time employment after graduation;

Andrew Sweeny has joined Microsoft's Networking Group.

As a major advisor I have graduated 1 PhD student and 6 MS degree students with thesis option. Currently I advise 2 PhD students and 5 Master-degree students all with thesis option (non thesis option students are not listed nor counted). Note that I have served or serving as advisory committee member for additional 4 PhD Students and 4 MS non ECE students. For further details consult Advising Activities section.

Scholarly Activities and Research

In the past year I have produced the following:

Publications:

1 Patent Application,

2 Journal Publications Published, 2 Submitted, 1 to be Submitted (December).

3 Conference Publications Published, 1 Submitted,

3 NSF proposals as PI, additional 1 NSF proposal to be submitted due December 17, and 2 as CoPI.

For more information please see the section Brief History of the Candidate.

Research:

Organized and Hosted NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation Workshop (reviews depicting the quality of organization of this event are attached in NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation Workshop 2009),

Participated in International "NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation" 2009,

Secured 64 Microphone Array from NIST for Research,

Designed and Developed a Currency Bills High-Speed Scanner for iCVn (www.icvn.com),

Collaborating with Circular Logic to evaluate their nonlinear filter for signal enhancement and sound separation (www.circular-logic.com)

Software and Hardware Development

Developing a web portal with my graduate students for TRDA of Melbourne in collaboration with Nterspec.

Completed PPT Commander A Voice Only Activated Application

Ported PPT Commander to Apple Mac OS

Developed Voice Activated Elevator Simulator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5CeVtQMvK0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ8eyBTbS_E

Developed a Nursing Call Station Voice Only Activated interface for patients. Extending its capability for the patient to control its bed, TV and other devices connected to the system.

Developed a Voice Activated Car Inspection System prototype for BMW:

http://files.me.com/hardcaseron/l3byyd.mov

Developed a High Speed Currency Bill's Scanning System using Embedded Hardware.

Funding

Over $60,000.00 of funding from iCVn as support and equipment for R&D work on High Speed Scanner.

NSF funded projects ($260,000.00).

NSF pending funds ($205,641.00 + $185,700.00 = $391,341.00).

NSF to be submitted (December 17, 2009) pending funds ~$400,000.00

Integration of Students in the Research

My most important research and educational contribution to Florida Tech, is my dedication to involving undergraduates in research. All my achievements with the students were done with undergraduate students or with graduate students that were raised from FIT undergraduate ranks (e.g., Tudor Klein, Sean Powers, Brandon Schmitt, Xerxes Beharry, Ronald Ramdhan, Raymond Sastraputera, Chris Hellriegel, Pattarapong Rojansthien). In particular, I pride myself for (i) my heavy focus on undergraduate research that produced a wealth of outcomes especially over the past 3 years, (ii) establishment of reputable collaborative partnership with industry, and (iii) for a major educational collaboration that I have contributed through collaborative work that I have done with Dr. Anagnostopoulos and other faculty at FIT and elsewhere (FGCU, UCF).

The support for research that I have conducted since I have joined FIT comes from my industry partners and from government sponsored programs. My research activity draws on my past extensive experience in conducting cutting-edge Research and Development work for the top companies in the world (for details see Appendix A3: Supporting Documentation for Scholarly and Research Related Activities. ).

As of now, I consider my main scientific contribution to be the solution that I have invented in the area of my specialty: Speech Processing and Recognition. I have solved a difficult problem for which there are no other appropriate solutions. The problem can be summarized as discrimination between a target word/phrase having a wake-up or alerting context (e.g., Alex, I need to talk to you.) from that same word/phrase in a referential context (e.g., Today I talked to Alex on the phone.). I have developed a revolutionary speech recognition technology (called Wake-Up-Word or WUW for short) that solves this problem. This solution can change how we can interact with computers. Furthermore, this solution can be applied to general speech recognition problem thus improving their accuracy over 1,500%-30,000% providing solutions that approach human performance. The solution is protected by my two US patents: ("Scoring and re-scoring dynamic time warping of speech" US # 7,085,717, and "Dynamic time warping using frequency distributed distance measures", US # 6,983,246). Those patents although only issued recently, are referenced in by following patents:

7,437,291

Using partial information to improve dialog in automatic speech recognition systems

7,143,034

Dynamic time warping device for detecting a reference pattern having a smallest matching cost value with respect to a test pattern, and speech recognition apparatus using the same

7,085,717

Scoring and re-scoring dynamic time warping of speech

5,455,889

Labeling speech using context-dependent acoustic prototypes

I strongly advocate and practice teaching approach that bridges the gap between theory and practice. This approach has allowed me to establish a number of strategic partnerships with industry: ThinkEngine Networks (http://www.thinkengine.com), iCVn (http://www.iCVn.com), QTSI (http://www.qtsi.com), PCB (http://www.pcb.com), Knigh's Armament Company (http://www.knightarmco.com), BMW, Microsoft, etc.

With industry partnerships I have been able to support me and my students research. The current total amount of direct support from industry exceeds $250,000.

For example, ThinkEngine Networks (http://www.thinkengine.com) supported my research in speech recognition for first 2.5 years at FIT (~$82000). For more information please consult my Rsum and/or contact a former senior Vice Presidents of Research: Geoffrey Parkhurst: [email protected] and Paul Gagne: [email protected] (detailed contact information also listed under references from industry section).

In addition, through my industry collaborators, I have brought in equipment worth well over $60,000. In the ongoing collaboration with iCVn of Baltimore my team is designing a new hardware that will augment the Shinwoo money counting device with a scanner capable of reading serial numbers from any currency (e.g., US Dollars, UK Pounds, SW Franks, European Union Euros, etc.), configured by software that we are also developing. We have also re-designed and re-implemented their core application software that now connects to the Shinwoo device and communicates with it. As of October 2008, iCVn has already contributed over $20,000 worth of equipment and over $40,000 direct support for me and my students' (Sean Powers, Xerxes Beharry, Jacob Zurasky, Andrew Leslie Sweeny, Alex Roberts) research and development efforts. For further information please contact Theodore Paraskevakos, President and CEO at [email protected] (detailed contact information also listed under references from industry section).

Additional source of funding is expected to materialize soon in collaboration with KnightArmor Co. Please, note that due to the proprietary and classified nature of the research the results of all these efforts cannot be legally published or publicly documented. For further information please refer to George Kontis Vice President KnightArmor Co: [email protected] (detailed contact information also listed under references from industry section).

QTSI, a Cocoa Beach based company - During the first half of 2006 I have completed a very import pilot study for QTSI of Cocoa Beach utilizing my Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition Technology to Seismic Signals. The achieved results from this study, according to professionals in that field, are the best compared to up-to-date currently published reports. For further information please contact Dr. Ken Ports [email protected], a senior Manager at QTSI and former colleague of ECE Department. I must note that If it was not for proprietary nature of the conducted research, a large number of papers could have been publishing just from this effort alone. Detailed contact information also listed under references from industry section.

PCB, an internationally recognized corporation, has donated over $5,000.00 worth of specialized industrial quality equipment consisting of high precision microphones and data acquisition equipment for microphone array research. In addition PCB is partnering with myself for NSFs MRI research proposal to establish a largest microphone array laboratory in the south east. Contact information: Ray Rautenstrauch [email protected].

Additional notable collaborations are listed below:

BMW Actively working with Dr. Joachim G. Taiber, BMW Group, Head of IT Research Office, Information Technology Research Center (ITRC), Greenville South Carolina.

Tudor Klein and Microsoft - Working with Microsoft through my former Graduate Student, Tudor Klein, to establish an appropriate relationship to contribute development of their new-generation of speech recognition software. Contact information [email protected].

NIST, Speech Group - I have enrolled an FIT team (Arthur Kunkle and Dileep Koneru) in NIST sponsored evaluation effort, Rich Transcription Evaluation Project, with a goal to further advance speech recognition area. At a moment I have two graduate students actively involved in this project that if successful will bring significant attention to FIT. The goal of our participation is not only to use existing technologies but also to incorporate my inventions into existing systems (e.g., HTK and Sphinx) demonstrating their superiority over conventional methods.

At the beginning of the year 2010 I will be launching a web site (http://VoiceKey.fit.edu) through which a 90 day free trial of the PowerPoint Commander - a voice activated Power Point presentation software application will be offered. This cross platform (Windows as well as Microsoft OS) application is the result of research and developed that I have done over the past 8 years. This application incorporates my Wake-Up-Word (WUW) Speech Recognizer. It enables users to control their power-point presentation program using voice only. The uniqueness of the application is the ability of the technology to distinguish a presentation speech from the speakers command. For example:

Presentation Speech: "Processing of speech signal requires application of short time analysis. The overall process is depicted in the block diagram presented in the next slide."

Command: "Computer! Go to Next Slide."

Although speech recognition technology has been around for over 25 years, it has to be emphasized that this kind of accuracy performance required by this application has not been developed by any commercial or research institutions yet, and thus my WUW technology has a potential to revolutionize the way we communicate with computers.

Up to date I have submitted 19 proposals to NSF: 13 of which I am PD/PI. The total worth of these research projects was $5,524,797.00. In addition I have submitted a $10-Million multi-institutional, collaborative Center of Excellence proposal, as a co-PI to the Florida Board of Governors. The proposal ended up being among the top 10 proposals in scientific merit as judged by the prestigious Oak Ridge Associated Universities reviewers (ORAU: Top 10 in Scientific Review Ranking). My contribution as judged by my pears was critical to the scientific merit ranking of the proposal (see Dr. Rodriguez recommendation).

Two (2) NSF projects were awarded (totaling $260,000) and 1 is pending ($1,198,728). I have also submitted 3 proposals: to Rockwell Collins, State of Florida and Lindberg Ann Foundation as PI/Co-PI totaling $2,156,012.

In addition I have submitted a number of SBIR proposals, one of which was invited proposal by National Institute of Justice (NIJ) of the US Government. For further details please consult list of proposals table. Succinctly put, I have generated or I have been involved in generation of on average greater than 3.3 proposals per year.

A plethora of additional outcomes are the fruit of two major projects (totaling $260,000): (1) EMD-MLR project sponsored by NSF and supported through grant DUE-CCLI-0341601 of $99,996 under the Course, Curriculum and Laboratories Improvement (CCLI) program and the Educational Materials Development (EMD) track, and (2) AMALTHEA project (AMALTHEA REU Site) also sponsored by NSF under the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program and grant IIS-REU-0647018 for $160,701 over a period of 3 years (2007-2010). I am a Co-PI that played a crucial role in its successful execution as elaborated in detail in Supporting Documentation for Scholarly and Research Related Activities section.

I have completed two chapters of an innovative Digital Signal Processing text book for undergraduates. I plan to complete the book proposal by end of 2011 and have it presented to publishers. The chapters are included in the Appendix A2: Supporting Documentation for Teaching and Related Activities..

Service Activities

In May 2009, FIT has hosted NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation Workshop. I have organized, managed and executed the workshop. The reviews of the quality of organization of the event are attached in Appendix (NIST Rich Transcription Evaluation Workshop 2009 under the section A4. Supporting Documentation for Service and Related Activities).

As a result of my efforts and my collaborators efforts, we have created the uCollaborator Coalition of Excellence (uCE, pronounced "you see") along with other researchers at Florida Gulf Coast University, University of Central Florida (Institute for Simulation and Training) and industrial partners (www.ucollaborator.com). Currently, uCE is engaging in research, development, and commercialization of a new breed of ubiquitous collaboration technologies. And, recently, the coalition has submitted a couple of grant proposals for developing an open-platform to connect the physical and virtual worlds both synchronously (same time) and asynchronously (anytime, anywhere) and I took the lead on one of them as indicated in previous section and detailed in Research and Scholarly Activities section.

In 2004 & 2005 I and Dr. Marius Silaghi have proposed and introduced a Special Speech Processing and Recognition track in FLAIRS. This task entailed hosting the www site with the information about the new track, collecting the papers, recruiting reviewers, organizing, conducting and managing the peer review process, and notifying the conference chair of the final list of accepted papers. In addition I have also served as a session chair to both of those sessions. In total I have served as chair in 3 conferences (FLAIRS 2004 & 2005) as well as ASEE 2006. In ASEE I was invited to serve as a session chair. In addition, my paper was nominated for best paper award out of total of 9 nominated papers (see Best Paper Nomination section).

I have served as a professional reviewer for the: Wiley and Sons book Speech and Audio Signal Processing: Processing and Perception of Speech and Music, by Gold, Morgan; Elsevier's Journals of Speech Communication, Neural Networks, and Nonlinear Analysis, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (2007), ACM Symposium on Applied Computing NLSP (2008), FLAIRS (2005 and 2006); First Conference on Information Technology and Engineering Sciences, Kosova (2007). Served as Reviewer for Academic Advancement of Dr. Dimitrios Charalampidis - ECE department of University of New Orleans.

I typically advise 25-35 undergraduate students each year, and directly work with at least 2 junior and senior design teams. I also serve as advisor to Chi Phi student society here at Florida Tech.

The additional service activities include representing ECE department in FIT's Graduate Curriculum Committee (2003-2005). Served as member of Department Head Search Committee (2007) as well as currently in Faculty Search Committee (2008-2009). Serving in ECE department's ABET and Curriculum Committee. In addition as a only Computer Engineering Faculty with a Computer Engineering Degree I advice directly my Department Head in all matters regarding to Computer Engineering Curriculum.

Finally, my activities contributed to university's outreach efforts through AMALTHEA and EMD-MLR; NSF funded projects; I have represented FIT in Harris Engineering Week several times (2004-2008), LASER DAY (2005-2007) and personal presentations at BCC, Melbourne L.B. Johnson Middle School, Cocoa Beach High School. Finally I am serving as a judge in the science fair for Central Brevard Catholic Homeschool Group (2007, 2008) (e-mail: [email protected]).

Since 2000, I serve as a member of Board of Directors for a non-governmental human-rights organization "Center For Balkan Development". For more information please see http://www.friendsofbosnia.org/who_board.html.

Brief History of the Candidate

This section should be a narrative summarizing the candidates activities since the last promotion and emphasizing those activities for which promotion is deserved. For candidates recently employed by Florida Tech, appropriate activities at the former employment, as well as at Florida Tech should be delineated and discussed. The current rsum contained in Appendix A1 should be referenced.

I was part of the second generation that attended a prestigious high-school, Mathematical Gymnasium, in Prishtina, Kosova. In addition to regular curriculum, I was taught 9-12 credit hours per each semester of various mathematical subject areas including theory of axiomatic disciplines, and Lobachevski geometry, Physics including Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity as well as General Theory of Relativity, as well as classical science subjects Chemistry and Biology. My diploma work/high-school Thesis was "Experimental Methods for Measurement of Speed of Light".

Before my academic appointment at Florida Tech I have been a lecturer in University of Prishtina, Kosova from 1981-1984. I taught classes covering areas such as Control Theory, Digital Communications, Theory of Algorithms, Fortran Programming, and Digital Logic and Design. In 1984 I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship that enabled me to pursue Graduate Studies in the US. I continued my graduate studies (that I had already started in University of Zagreb) at Clemson University, earning my master's and doctoral degrees in Computer Engineering in the Summer of 1986 and 1990 respectively under the valuable advising of Dr. John Gowdy. The doctoral research area was in the speech recognition area and that work was summarized in dissertation titled "Artificial Neural Networks for Speech Recognition Applications".

After graduation I pursued Post-Doctoral Research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (Eidgenssische Technische Hochschule) in Zrich - also known as the MIT of Europe, where renown physicist Albert Einstein studied and taught. I was involved in an image understanding research project: Design and Analysis of Spatial Image Sequence directed by Dr. Armin Grn director of Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry. The work conducted in this institute resulted into 2 journal publications, 5 conference publications and 5 technical reports. While at the Institute I organized and carried out a workshop on "Neural Networks".

In 1993, I entered the high-tech industry as R&D scientist in the speech recognition area. I started my carrier with Voice-Processing Corporation until 1996 that merged then with Voice Control Systems until 1997 (both acquired by Nuance). I was with the Speech Recognition commercialization group of BBN Technologies of Cambridge Massachusetts until 1999 working with renown scientists: John Makhoul and Richard Schwartz. In 1999 I joined then SpeechWorks corporation that later become Nuance; a leading commercial speech recognition technology provider with headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts. Those early years working on cutting edge technology development were crucial to my professional growth and understanding of the scientific problem of speech recognition and speech production. Due to the proprietary nature of the research and development work, no publications of my past work are possible without violating the law. The accumulated expertise in this area landed me with a critical position in then recently established company ThinkEngine Networks in Marlborough Massachusetts. I worked on a problem that even today there is no appropriate solution. The problem can be summarized as discrimination between a target sentinel word/phrase having a wake-up or alerting context (e.g., Computer, open PowerPoint presentation.) from that same word/phrase in a referential context (e.g., My Computer is a quad-core CPU with 8 GB of RAM.), for which I have developed a revolutionary speech recognition technology (called Wake-Up-Word or WUW for short) that can change how we can interact with computers. The solution is protected by my two US patents: ("Scoring and re-scoring dynamic time warping of speech" US # 7,085,717, and "Dynamic time warping using frequency distributed distance measures", US # 6,983,246), and presently patent application (September 15, 2009) "Exploiting Differences in Correlations for Modeled and Un-Modeled Sequences by Transforming Trained Model Topology in Sequence Recognition" AP# 61242569, EFS ID: 6076846. I joined FIT to bring in all that knowledge and know-how to its students and to pursue possible commercialization of this revolutionary speech recognition technology.

My activities at FIT are detailed in Summary of Accomplishments, Main Dossier and Appendix sections.


Promotion Dossier

Section

II

Main Dossier Material

From APPENDIX II. PROMOTION GUIDELINES: COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING of Faculty Handbook 2008 Section College of Engineering Promotion Guidelines page 39: The areas for evaluation are consistent with those specified in a memo of November 2, 1998 from the Associate Provost, and include (1) Teaching and Related Activities, (2) Scholarly Activities and Research, and (3) Service Activities. Scholarly Activities and Research have traditionally been the primary focus for promotion at U.S. Universities; however, "outstanding" performance in the Teaching and Service areas are also important in the present climate of higher education in America and will be given appropriate recognition.

Table of Contents

Main Dossier Material15

Teaching and Related Activities17

Course Instruction and Development17

Graduate Level Course Development17

Undergraduate Level Course Development18

Course Instruction19

Courses Taught in Reverse-Chronological Order19

Innovative Pedagogical Techniques28

Teaching Material28

Teaching Style28

Collaboration with Industry29

Text Book and Laboratory Material30

Advising Activities31

Outside Funding for Curriculum Development & Laboratories33

Research and Scholarly Activities35

NSF Grants36

Patents38

Collaboration with Industry38

Software Application - PowerPoint Commander40

Proposal Activities41

List of Proposals41

Patents43

Journal Publications43

Conference Publications44

Public Technical Reports46

Service Activities48

uCollaborator Coalition48

Conferences and Related Activities48

Reviewing49

Advising49

Committees50

Outreach50

CBD Board of Directors50

Recruiting Students50

Promotion Dossier

Main Dossier Material


From College of Engineering Promotion Guidelines: The candidate for Full Professor will have a record of performance that includes many of the activities specified below:

(1) A consistent record of teaching excellence, versatility and student production at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

(2) Published or made significant contributions to a textbook in his/her field.

(3) Served as the major advisor for M.S. as well as Ph.D. graduates.

(4) Served as faculty representative (advisor) to student clubs, societies or organizations.

(5) Served on both M.S. and Ph.D. committees in own and in other academic departments.

(6) Been an active member of regional and/or national educational societies/organizations.

(7) Introduced new courses into the curriculum, developed new academic programs, or made significant modifications to an existing academic program, at the undergraduate and/or graduate level.

(8) Received funding from outside agencies or foundations for curriculum development, enhancing teaching laboratories, etc.

(9) Developed and introduced innovative pedagogical techniques.

Course Instruction and Development

(1) A consistent record of teaching excellence, versatility and student production at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

(7) Introduced new courses into the curriculum, developed new academic programs, or made significant modifications to an existing academic program, at the undergraduate and/or graduate level.

In the past 7 years at FIT I taught 15 different courses; that turns out to be on average 2.1 new courses per year. I lectured total of 56 times; that is 8 courses per year. In my lectures I apply innovative teaching methodology taking maximum advantage of technology.

Graduate Level Course Development

I have introduced a complete set of 4 graduate level courses in ECE graduate program covering the most important aspect of human communication chain that I call "Speech Vibrations" (http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/SpeechVibrations). This newly introduced curriculum is offered only in prestigious schools like Harvard and MIT. Only recently (2006), Harvard University, a top ranking university in the world, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 5th ranked university in the world, (http://www.arwu.org/rank/2006/ARWU2006_Top100.htm) jointly started offering multidisciplinary program in the area of Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology emphasizing the exact same areas that I have introduced here at FIT in 2003. For more information on this please visit: http://hst.mit.edu/shbt.

Now, the depth of offered curriculum at FIT completely covers the fascinating area of human communication chain: from the sound vibrations produced by speech, speech signal processing, pattern recognition as applied to speech modeling, speech recognition, natural language understanding and acoustics of American English. To achieve this goal a total of 4 courses were introduced:

Speech Processing ECE 5525

Speech Recognition ECE 5526

Search and Decoding In Speech RecognitionECE 5527

Acoustics of American English Speech ECE 5528

Undergraduate Level Course Development

At the undergraduate level, I have designed & developed new academic programs for 5 courses - 4 of which require laboratory exercises, listed below:

Digital State MachinesECE 3541





All the above courses are required courses in Computer Engineering and/or Engineering Program. Microcomputer Systems 1&2 (4 Credit Hour Courses) and Multifarious Systems 1&2 (4 Credit Hour Courses) required also development of laboratory exercises.

Digital State Machines course now covers the area of Finite State Machines a necessary curriculum for any Computer Engineering students. Note that this area was not offered by ECE department in the past. The curriculum for ECE3551 & 3552 (Microcomputer Systems 1&2) class is now focused on Embedded Systems Development using DSP Processors. It aligns FIT's Electrical and Computer Engineering program with top schools in the nation by covering cutting-edge, state-of-the-art technology and development practices for speech, audio and video processing on embedded hardware. Students that have taken those courses will be highly marketable and competitive and will possess valued skills in the area that is covered by only few academic institutions in North America. In addition it fulfills the growing need of the industry for embedded systems development (e.g., cellular phones like the iPhone) raising in this manner FITs academic standing with industry. For Multifarious Systems 1&2 I made significant modifications by re-designing & developing the curriculum to meet current demands for Web Based Application Development, while keeping up with the state-of-the-art of constantly changing technologies in this area. Two student groups have established their own companies utilizing their skills obtained in this class (Bryan Jenks, Jonathan Bredemeyer, and Joseph Pearce).

Course Instruction

In addition to teaching courses that I have developed, I taught at FIT , the following courses:

Graduate Level:

Computer Networks 2 ECE 5535



Undergraduate Level:

Hardware Software Integration ECE 2552

Signal and SystemsECE 3222

Computer ArchitectureECE 4551

Electric and Electronic CircuitsECE4991

All listed courses are required courses for Electrical Engineering and/or Computer Engineering Program and also required for non ECE students (ECE4991).

Courses Taught in Reverse-Chronological Order

ECE 3551 (Fall 2009)

Microcomputer Systems 1

Upper division undergraduate course - Required for ECE majors

Class enrollment: 31 students

Student / Teacher evaluations: N/A

ECE 3553 (Fall 2009)

Multifarious Systems 1

Upper division undergraduate course - Required for CPE majors



ECE 5527 (Fall 2009)

Search and Decoding in Speech Recognition

Graduate Upper Level Course



ECE 5999 (Fall 2009)

Thesis

Graduate Thesis Course



ECE 6999 (Fall 2009)

Dissertation




ECE 3551 (Spring 2009)







Upper division undergraduate course - Required for CPE majors




Speech Recognition





Thesis





Dissertation




ECE 5999 (Fall 2008)

Thesis




ECE 5525 (Fall 2008)

Speech Processing




ECE 3553 (Fall 2008)


Upper division undergraduate course - Required for CE majors



ECE 3551 (Fall 2008)





ECE 3541 (Fall 2008)

Digital State Machines




Note: This course is completely re-developed and covers an area of Final State Machines that should have originally been covered.

ECE 5570 (Summer 2008)

Special Topics in Computer Engineering

Linked to AMALTHEA NSF REU Project




Digital State Machines




Note: This course is completely re-developed and covers an area of Final State Machines that should have originally been covered.


Signal and Systems





Thesis





Speech Recognition














ECE 5999 (Fall 2007)

Thesis




ECE 5527 (Fall 2007)

Search and Decoding in Speech Recognition




ECE 5525 (Fall 2007)

Speech Processing




ECE 3553 (Fall 2007)





ECE 3551 (Fall 2007)






Thesis





Dissertation

Graduate Dissertation Research Course




Thesis





Speech Recognition





Independent Study













ECE 6999 (Fall 2006)

Dissertation




ECE 5999 (Fall 2006)

Thesis




ECE 5525 (Fall 2006)

Speech Processing




ECE 4553 (Fall 2006)


Upper division undergraduate



ECE 3553 (Fall 2006)





ECE 3552 (Fall 2006)





ECE 3551 (Fall 2006)






Dissertation





Speech Recognition





Software Hardware Integration





Software Hardware Design

Lower division undergraduate course - Required for ECE majors



ECE 6999 (Fall 2005)

Dissertation




ECE 5595 (Fall 2005)

Special Project in Computer Engineering




ECE 5525 (Fall 2005)

Speech Processing




ECE 4991 (Fall 2005)

Electrical and Electronic Circuits

Upper division undergraduate - required for non ECE engineering majors



ECE 3553 (Fall 2005)






Dissertation





Special Topics










Dissertation





Special Projects in Computer Engineering





Speech Processing









ECE 6999 (Fall 2004)

Dissertation




ECE 5999 (Fall 2004)

Thesis




ECE 5595 (Fall 2004)

Special Project in Computer Engineering




ECE 5525 (Fall 2004)

Speech Processing




ECE 3553 (Fall 2004)






Thesis

Graduate Thesis Research Course









Thesis





Speech Recognition





Speech Processing




ECE 5999 (Fall 2003)

Thesis




ECE 5525 (Fall 2003)

Speech Processing




ECE 4551 (Fall 2003)

Computer Architecture

Undergraduate Upper Level Course




Digital Systems Design 2





Digital Systems Design 1





Computer Networks 2




Innovative Pedagogical Techniques

(9) Developed and introduced innovative pedagogical techniques

A creative and innovative teaching methodology combining state-of-the-art technology enabling to link theory with its practical application characterizes my approach to teaching.

Teaching Material

Consequently all my lecture materials for undergraduate and graduate level courses are based on Power Point Presentation Notes (e.g., Ch5-Automatic Speech Recognition.ppt) and additional supplemental material that are WWW-accessible; see http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/web or http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/eceYYYY where YYYY is class number. The first link is the result of an ece3553 class project in which my student, Todd Alexander, under my direction has developed a system that will allow easy maintenance of a Web based interface to all this material. Total size of teaching material, manly documents containing text, source code (C++, perl, PHP, html, C#), matlab and other scripts, etc. stored in the university drive is reaching close to 10 GB.

Teaching Style

Furthermore, this innovative teaching style is focused on maximizing students' "exit knowledge" rather than relying only on test scores. Therefore, in all my courses I require from students to demonstrate mastering of the subject area by developing a practical application combining theory with a practical application. The demonstration requires students to verbally defend their work through a (1) Presentation, (2) Detailed Documentation (Microsoft Word, README file, source code, etc.) depicting their work, and (3) Implementation and a demonstration of the project implementation. The following link: Example Project exemplifies a typical project outcome from one of my graduate courses and this link: Example Project2 one from my undergraduate level courses. All past and current projects are publicly accessible from u drive following the links that have the format: "http://my.fit.edy/~vkepuska/eceYYYY/Projects", where eceYYYY indicates the course number (e.g., ECE3553).

Each project is assessed based on provided detailed instructions for the project requirements. This document resides in each corresponding class link under Final Project Requirements document as exemplified in the following link:

http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/ece3551/Final%20Project%20Requirements.doc.

The examination and quality of assessment of the project is conducted by providing each student with allocated at least 30min time slot to present his/her work. Large classes require 2 days of presentation times starting from 8:00 am-12:00 pm, and 1:00pm-6:00pm to complete the examination. It is worth noting that the enrollment process is fully automated based on the first serve basis. Each reserved time slot requires my formal approval for which I receive an automated e-mail notification. This application is www based and fully integrated into my web based u: drive interface. The following link provides an example of this system: http://my.fit.edu/~vkepuska/web/courses.php#ece3551-projects

Note my teaching experience in addition to my early years at University of Prishtina, also was enriched during my graduate studies at Clemson University (1986-1990) where I taught (lectures and labs) the following courses: Digital Processing of Speech Signals, Digital Systems, Digital Circuit Design, Microprocessor Applications, Programming and Electronics.

Collaboration with Industry

I strongly advocate and use teaching approach which bridges the gap between theory and practice. This approach has allowed me to establish a number of strategic partnerships with industry: ThinkEngine Networks (http://www.thinkengine.com), iCVn (http://www.iCVn.com), QTSI (http://www.qtsi.com), Knigh's Armament Company (http://www.knightarmco.com), PCB (http://www.pcb.com), BMW ([email protected]), Microsoft, Nterspec Technologies, LLC (www.nterspec.com) etc. More specifically with industry partnerships I have been able to support me and my students research as well as provide for expensive equipment. The current total amount of direct support from industry exceeds $250,000.



BMW Actively working with Dr. Joachim G. Taiber, BMW Group, Head of IT Research Office, Information Technology Research Center (ITRC), Greenville South Carolina. ([email protected]). The present BMW Car Inspection Application Demo


Text Book and Laboratory Material

(2) Published or made significant contributions to a textbook in his/her field.

I have completed two chapters of an innovative Digital Signal Processing text book for undergraduates. I plan to complete the book proposal by end of 2009 and have it presented to publishers. The chapters are included in the Appendix A2. Initial idea for the book content was accepted by Prentice Hall. In addition developed Laboratory material will be expanded with most notable student projects to provide a basis for the text book (see ECE 3552 & 4553 Multifarious Systems 1 & 2 Laboratory Material, ECE 3551 & 3552 Microcomputer Systems 1 &2 Laboratory Material, as well as Example Project from ECE 3553).

For the list of publications please consult section or my CV (Section III Appendix A1).


Advising Activities

(3 & 5) Served as the major advisor for M.S. as well as Ph.D. graduates in own and in other academic departments.

As a major advisor I have graduated 1 PhD student, and 6 MS degree students with thesis option. Currently I advise 2 PhD students and 5 Master-degree students all with thesis option (non thesis option students are not listed nor counted). Note that I have served or serving as advisory committee member for additional 4 PhD Students and 4 MS non ECE students.

Major Advisor

Student

Graduating Year

Dissertation/Thesis Title:

PhD

Tamas Kaza

2006

Communications Protocol for RF-based Wireless Indoor Localization Networks

Al Ghamdy, Amin O.

2010

TBD

Eljhani, Mohamed M.

2011

TBD

MS

Tudor Klein

2007

Triple Scoring of Hidden Markov Models in Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition

Tien-Hsiang Lo

2005

Analysis of Weighted-Sum of Line Spectrum Pair Method for Spectral Estimation

Elias Victor

2005

1553 Avionics Bus Hardware Integration Into Expendable Launch Vehicle (ELV) Simulation Model

Za Hniang Za

2008

"A Study of Approaches for Microphone Array Signal Processing"

Chih-Ti Shih

2009

"Use of Pitch and Energy of the Speech Signal for Discrimination of 'Alerting' from 'Referential' Context

Raymond Sastraputera

2009

"Prosodic Features for Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition"

Arthur Kunkle

2010

"Recognition of Sequences"

Pattarapong Rojanasthien

2009

TBD

Ronald Ramdhan

2009

TBD

Xerxes Beharry

2009

TBD

Mohammed Almeer

2009

TBD

Advisory Committee Member

Student

Graduating Year

Dissertation/Thesis Title

PhD

Michel Ouendeno (ECE)

2007

Image Fusion for Improved Perception

Igor Lugach

(MEA)

2006

Effect of Accurate and Simplified Interactions modeling in a Null-Flux Electromagnetic Levitation System on Performance of Multi-DOF Sliding Mode Controller

Scott Meredith (ECE)

2011

"Lightning Generated Electric and Magnetic Fields: a methodology into the development of three models and their utilization in determining the currents induced within a three-wired tether"

Mohammed ??? (ECE)

2010

MS

Chih-Ti Shih (ENM)

2009

Patric Durland (SYS)

2009

Examination: "Project Arcade"

Osama

Saraireh (ES)

2007

Non-Thesis Option

Rachna Vargiya (CS)

2004

Keyword Spotting Using Normalization of Posterior Probability Confidence Measures

(4) Served as faculty representative (advisor) to student clubs, societies or organizations.

I typically advise 25-35 undergraduate students each year, and directly work with at least 2 junior and 2 senior design teams. I also serve as advisor to Chi Phi student society here at Florida Tech.

In addition to my office hours I have an open-door policy and I am known for my availability to students.

Outside Funding for Curriculum Development & Laboratories

(8) Received funding from outside agencies or foundations for curriculum development, enhancing teaching laboratories, etc.

As indicated previously in Collaboration with Industry section I was able to leverage my collaborations with industry to secure funding for laboratory equipment as well as undergraduate and graduate student support. In addition to unique relationship with industry, I pride myself for (i) my heavy focus on undergraduate research that produced a wealth of outcomes over the past 5 years and (ii) for a major educational collaboration that I have contributed through collaborative work with industry as well as with my departmental colleague Dr. Anagnostopoulos. This collaboration is detailed in the next section under NSF Grants.


Research and Scholarly Activities

The term "research" is used in its broad sense of intellectual inquiry. Essentially, the term "research" is used interchangeably with the term "scholarly activities."

Review briefly the highlights of your research contributions. Emphasize specific contributions to knowledge, but do not become overly technical. Review your current and future research plans. Review your research support history and future plans.

List in reverse chronological order externally funded grants and contracts. Include for each the sponsoring agency or company, dates and period of support, number of students supported and amounts funded. Give a separate or contiguous list of projects internally funded or unfunded. List publications and contributions. List these publications in the following order or in chronological order indicating in the margin the appropriate category. Copies of some or all publications should be included in Appendix AIII. If too bulky, part or all of Appendix AIII may be separated from the main dossier.

Books and monographs

Articles in refereed journals and books

Articles in non-refereed journals or books

Articles in refereed journals or books in press

Articles in non-refereed journals or books in press

Articles in refereed journals or books submitted

Articles in non-refereed journals or books submitted

Conference presentations and whether the entire paper and/or the abstract only was reviewed.

Published technical reports.

Other publications such as Course Manuals, Guidebooks, etc.

List and describe briefly any Disclosures of Inventions or resulting Patents.

Provide a brief statement regarding the impact of these publications in the field of research. A recommended indicator of scholarly impact would be a review of the candidates publications citation rate. Include a statement of the ranking of these journals in the candidates research field. List invited lectures of special note during the last three years.

The candidate should provide a brief statement on his/her interpretation of the role and success of his/her scholarly activities and discuss plans for future creative work and research. Comment on how you have developed yourself professionally in your discipline since your last promotion/appointment to Florida Tech.

My most important research and educational contribution to Florida Tech, is my dedication to involving undergraduates in research. All my achievements with the students were done with undergraduate students or with graduate students that were raised from FIT undergraduate ranks (e.g., Tudor Klein, Chih-Ti Shih, Raymond Sastraputera, Sean Powers, Brandon Schmitt, Xerxes Beharry, Ronald Ramdhan, Raymond Sastraputera, Chris Helriegel, Pattarapong Rojanasthien). In particular, I pride myself for (i) my heavy focus on undergraduate research that produced a wealth of outcomes especially over the past 3 years, (ii) establishment of reputable collaborative partnership with industry, and (iii) for a major research and educational collaboration that I have achieved through collaborative work with Dr. Rodriguez (FGCU), Dr. Georgiopoulos, Dr. Fiore (UCF), Dr. Anagnostopoulos, Dr. Carstens, Dr. Converse (FIT), and other faculty at FIT and elsewhere; Dr. Gurbuz (ATR Japan), Dr. Ports (QTSI),.Dr. Liakopoulos and Mr. Paraskevakos (ICVN), etc.

In addition to collaboration with academic institutions, the support for research that I have conducted since I have joined FIT comes from my industry partners and from government sponsored programs. My research activity draws on my past extensive experience in conducting cutting-edge Research and Development work for the top companies in the world (for the list please refer to the Summary of Accomplishments and the Brief History of the Candidate sections, as well as discussed below).

NSF Grants

A number of important outcomes are the fruit of two major NSF projects (totaling $260,000). I am serving in a role of Co-PI but have a crucial role in its successful The first project, Project EMD-MLR, is a Phase-I (prototype) project. It is sponsored by NSF and supported through grant DUE-CCLI-0341601 of $99,996 under the Course, Curriculum and Laboratories Improvement (CCLI) program and the Educational Materials Development (EMD) track (see Section III). The project is a partnership of 3 additional institutions, namely, University of Central Florida (UCF; Orlando), Brevard Community College (BCC; Melbourne) and Seminole Community College (SCC; Oviedo). FIT is the lead organization and the remaining 3 institutions are sub-awarded. This proposal was one of the top 17% of approx. 800 Phase-I CCLI proposals submitted back in 2003 that received funding. The project started in May 2004 and is slated to end in April 2008. Project EMD-MLR is very ambitious in terms of goals. Primarily, its goal is to engage undergraduate students into research in the high-tech area of Machine Learning (ML), an area that is of multi-disciplinary nature and ever-developing. The project provides the opportunity to university seniors and sophomore, community college students to engage in research in a high quality student-mentor setting. Such privilege is typically reserved for graduate students only. The involvement is typically 2-semester long and students perform their research as their senior design or capstone project, either on an individual basis or as a member of a student team. Each student team closely interacts on a weekly basis with a project faculty and a graduate student. All project participants from all 4 institutions are meeting on a monthly basis to show their progress, share ideas and discuss issues as a community to learn from each other.

This project, directed by Dr. Anagnostopoulos, was supported by 11 faculty (4 FIT, 4 UCF, 2 BCC, 1 SCC), an Industry Advisory Board of 8 scientists and engineers from the industry and the government (Boeing, Northrop-Grumman, NASA, etc.), as well as by an international Academic Advisory Board of 9 scholars from around the world (US, Spanish and Greek faculty). In its current lifespan the project has involved a total of 5 graduate students and 51 undergraduate students (22 FIT, 21 UCF, 5 BCC, 3 SCC) from the 4 institutions. The majority of the university students participating were juniors or seniors in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering and Computer Science, while the community college participants were sophomores primarily stemming from Computer Science related fields.

The second project where I am serving in the capacity of Co-PI, see AMALTHEA REU Site, is also sponsored by NSF under the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program and grant IIS-REU-0647018 for $160,701 over a period of 3 years (2007-2010). It got awarded in March 2007 as a collaborative effort between FIT and UCF (total grant amount was $300,000) with FIT being the lead institution and with Dr. Anagnostopoulos as the program's Director (see Section III Supporting Documentation for Scholarly and Research Related Activities). The effort is also generously supported by matching funds through the FIT Provost's Office. Please note that the REU Site program is one of NSF's premier and esteemed programs for undergraduate education. My proposal was one of the 12 funded out of all proposals submitted to NSF's CISE division in 2006. In addition, I and my team were highly commended by our NSF review panelists for the extent of the documented research we have with undergraduate students. Also, according to historical records, the AMALTHEA program seems to be the 3rd REU Site proposal ever to be awarded to Florida Tech. Each year 10 Engineering or Science undergraduates are recruited for a research experience in the summer for 10 weeks (typically, from mid May to end of July) at the host universities (FIT & UCF). Its intellectual focus is again Machine Learning (ML) and its applications. The faculty and graduate students will educate the undergraduate program participants about cutting-edge ML technology and, subsequently, perform supervised research with them. The ultimate goal is to produce research results that directly impact the research area of ML and, finally, publish/present these results in technical journals and conferences. The program will pay for the students' travel, accommodations and per diem expenses via a highly competitive stipend. AMALTHEA is supported by a project staff of 5 faculty (2 FIT, 3 UCF), a network of 10 affiliate Universities around the nation and an Advisory Board of 6 researchers from the local industry and government sectors (Siemens, Harris, NASA, etc.).

Patents

As of now, I consider my most significant scientific contribution to be the solution in the area of Speech Processing and Recognition. the invention solved a difficult problem for which there no other appropriate solution. The problem can be summarized as discrimination between a target word/phrase having a wake-up or alerting context (e.g., Computer, start power-point presentation) from that same word/phrase in a referential context (e.g., My computer has a quad-core CPU.). I have developed a revolutionary speech recognition technology (called Wake-Up-Word or WUW for short) that solves this problem. This solution can change how we can interact with computers. Furthermore, this solution can be applied to general speech recognition problem thus improving their accuracy over 1,500%-30,000% providing solutions that approach human performance. The solution is protected by my two US patents: ("Scoring and re-scoring dynamic time warping of speech" US # 7,085,717, and "Dynamic time warping using frequency distributed distance measures", US # 6,983,246) and presently patent application (September 15, 2009) "Exploiting Differences in Correlations for Modeled and Un-Modeled Sequences by Transforming Trained Model Topology in Sequence Recognition" AP# 61242569, EFS ID: 6076846 . Those first two patents although only issued recently, are referenced in by following patents:

US PTNO

Title

7,437,291

Using partial information to improve dialog in automatic speech recognition systems

7,143,034

Dynamic time warping device for detecting a reference pattern having a smallest matching cost value with respect to a test pattern, and speech recognition apparatus using the same

7,085,717

Scoring and re-scoring dynamic time warping of speech

5,455,889

Labeling speech using context-dependent acoustic prototypes

Collaboration with Industry

I strongly advocate and practice teaching approach that bridges the gap between theory and practice. This approach has allowed me to establish a number of strategic partnerships with industry: ThinkEngine Networks (http://www.thinkengine.com), iCVn (http://www.iCVn.com), QTSI (http://www.qtsi.com), PCB (http://www.pcb.com), Knigh's Armament Company (http://www.knightarmco.com), BMW, Microsoft, etc.

As indicated previously, through industry partnerships I have been able to fund my research and support my students. As of November 2009, total amount of direct support from industry exceeds $250,000.

For example, ThinkEngine Networks (http://www.thinkengine.com) supported my research in speech recognition for first 2.5 years at FIT (~$82000). For more information please consult my Rsum and/or contact a former senior Vice Presidents of Research: Geoffrey Parkhurst: [email protected] and Paul Gagne: [email protected] (detailed contact information also listed under references from industry section).

In addition, through my industry collaborators, I have brought in equipment worth well over $60,000. In the ongoing collaboration with iCVn of Baltimore my team is designing a new hardware that will augment the Shinwoo money counting device with a scanner capable of reading serial numbers from any currency (e.g., US Dollars, UK Pounds, SW Franks, European Union Euros, etc.), configured by software that we are also developing. We have also re-designed and re-implemented their core application software that now connects to the Shinwoo device and communicates with it. As of October 2008, iCVn has already contributed over $20,000 worth of equipment and over $40,000 direct support for me and my students' (Sean Powers, Xerxes Beharry, Andrew Leslie Sweeny, Alex Roberts) research and development efforts.

PCB, an internationally recognized corporation has donated over $5,000.00 worth of specialized industrial quality equipment consisting of high precision microphones and data acquisition equipment for microphone array research. In addition PCB is partnering with myself for NSFs MRI research proposal to establish a largest microphone array laboratory in the south east. Contact information: Ray Rautenstrauch [email protected].

QTSI, a Cocoa Beach based company - During the first half of 2006 I have completed a very import pilot study for QTSI of Cocoa Beach utilizing my Wake-Up-Word Speech Recognition Technology to Seismic Signals. The achieved results from this study, according to professionals in that field, are the best compared to up-to-date currently published reports. For further information please contact Dr. Ken Ports [email protected], a senior Manager at QTSI and former colleague of ECE Department. I must note that If it was not for proprietary nature of the conducted research, a large number of papers could have been publishing just from this effort alone.

Detailed contact information is also listed under references from industry section in .



BMW Actively working with Dr. Joachim G. Taiber, BMW Group, Head of IT Research Office, Information Technology Research Center (ITRC), Greenville South Carolina.


Software Application - PowerPoint Commander

At the beginning of the year 2009 I will be launching a web site (http://VoiceKey.fit.edu) through which a 90 day free trial of the PowerPoint Commander - a voice activated Power Point presentation software application will be offered. This cross platform (Windows as well as Microsoft OS) application is the result of research and developed that I have done over the past 8 years. This application incorporates my Wake-Up-Word (WUW) Speech Recognizer. It enables users to control their power-point presentation program using voice only. The uniqueness of the application is the ability of the technology to distinguish a presentation speech from the speakers command. For example:

Presentation Speech: "Speech Processing requires application of short time analysis. The overall process is depicted in the block diagram presented in the next slide."

Command: "Computer! Go to Next Slide".

Although speech recognition technology has been around for over 25 years, it has to be emphasized that this kind of accuracy performance required by this application has not been developed by any commercial or research institutions yet, and thus my WUW technology has a potential to revolutionize the way we communicate with computers.

Proposal Activities

In 2008, I have submitted a $10-Million multi-institutional, collaborative Center of Excellence proposal, as a co-PI, to the Florida Board of Governors. The proposal ended up being among the top 10 proposals in scientific merit as judged by the prestigious Oak Ridge Associated Universities reviewers (ORAU: Top 10 in Scientific Review Ranking). My contribution as judged by my pears was critical to the scientific merit ranking of the proposal (Dr. Rodriguez).

Up to date I have submitted 15 proposals to NSF: 9 of which I am PD/PI. The total worth of these research projects is/was $4,789,708. Two (2) projects were awarded (totaling $260,000) and 1 is pending ($1,198,728). In addition, I have submitted 3 proposals to Rockwell Collins, State of Florida and Lindberg Ann Foundation as PI/Co-PI totaling $2,156,012. A plethora of additional outcomes are the fruit of two major projects (totaling $260,000): (1) EMD-MLR project sponsored by NSF and supported through grant DUE-CCLI-0341601 of $99,996 under the Course, Curriculum and Laboratories Improvement (CCLI) program and the Educational Materials Development (EMD) track, and (2) AMALTHEA project (AMALTHEA REU Site) also sponsored by NSF under the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program and grant IIS-REU-0647018 for $160,701 over a period of 3 years (2007-2010) and played a crucial role in its successful execution as Co-PI. For additional details please consult List of Proposals section next.

List of Proposals

Up-to-date, I have submitted proposals to NSF (15), Florida Board of Governors (1), SBIR-STTR (2), and a numerous of other proposals (not listed here); internal (e.g., NSF-MRI), earmarked, or as a consulting collaborator with a partnering organizations.

As of November 2008, the total amount of requested funding where I am PI/PD or Co-PI exceeds $16 mil as shown in the table below. Succinctly put, I have generated or I have been involved in generation of on average at least 3.3 proposals per year.

Agency

Title

Requested Funding

Florida Board of Governors

FGCU+FIT+UCF Collaboration Software Center of Excellence: uCollaborator: Research, Development and Commercialization of Ubiquitous Collaboration Technologies

$10,000,000

NSF-IIS

RI:HCC:Medium:RUI: uC: Ubiquitous Collaboration Platform for Multimodal Team Interaction Support

$698,728

NSF-EEC

uC: Ubiquitous Collaboration Innovations in Engineering Education Infrastructure

$499,297

NSF-IIS

RI:HCC:Small:RUI: Investigation of Alerting and Referential Context in Human-Machine Interaction from Speech, Language and Visual Speech

$491,517

NSF-ECCS

MRI: Acquisition of a Massive Sensor Network System for Research and Development of Automatic Methods and Algorithms for Analysis of Sensors' Signals

$243,572

NSF-DUE

Development of a Comprehensive Curriculum & Learning Material for Embedded Digital Signal Processing Multimedia Applications

$149,947

NSF-IIS

REU Sites: Collaborative Research: Advances of Machine Learning in Theory & Applications (AMALTHEA)

$160,701

NSF-DUE

Collaborative Research: Building a Community of Learners & Scholars to develop, assess and disseminate Educational Materials & Teaching Practices in Machine Learning

$249,963

NSF-DUE

Computer Engineering Undergraduate Integrated Embedded Systems Curriculum

$210,336

NSF-IIS

Wake-Up-Word Integrated Voice Activated Response System

$597,238

NSF-CNS

CRCD/EI: Integrating R

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