Biography:

I was born in Haifa, Israel on September 24, 1948. I received the B.Sc., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Tel-Aviv University, Israel, in 1975, 1977 and 1983, respectively. From 1968 to 1984 I was with the Signal Corps Research Laboratory of the Israeli Defense Forces. During 1984-1985 I was a Bantrell post-doctoral fellow at MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a consultant with the Speech Systems Technology Group at Lincoln Laboratory, Lexington, Massachusetts. From 1985 to early 2003 I was with the Acoustics and Speech Research Department, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, where my research was aimed at developing models of hearing and at creating perception based signal analysis methods for speech recognition, coding and evaluation. Since early 2003 I am with Sensimetrics Corp., Somerville, Massachusetts, where I continues to acquire and model basic knowledge of auditory perception for the purpose of advancing speech, audio and hearing-aid technology.

Publications (partial):

• O. Ghitza. On the upper cutoff frequency of the auditory critical-band envelope detectors in the context of speech perception. J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 110(3):1628-1640, 2001.
• O. Ghitza, and P. Kroon. Dichotic presentation of interleaving critical-band envelopes: An application to multi-descriptive coding. In Proc. IEEE Speech Coding Workshop, Delavan, Wisconsin, September 72-74 2000.
• O. Ghitza and M. M. Sondhi. Perceptually motivated measures for automatic speech recognition. In Proc. Robust Methods for Speech Recognition in Adverse Condition, pages 11-14, Tampere, Finland, May 25-26 1999.
• D. S. Kim, O. Ghitza, and P. Kroon. A computational model for mos prediction. In Proc. IEEE Speech Coding Workshop, 1999.
• O. Ghitza and M. M. Sondhi. On the perceptual distance between speech segments. J. Acoust. Soc. Amer., 101(1):522-529, Jan. 1997.
• O. Ghitza and M. M. Sondhi. On the perceptual distance between speech segments. In Workshop on Auditory Basis of Speech Perception, England, July 1996. Invited paper.
• S. Sandhu, O. Ghitza, and C-H. Lee. A comparative study of MEL Cepstra and EIH for phone classification under anverse conditions. In ICASSP '95, pages 409-412, Detroit, May 9-12 1995.
• O. Ghitza. Auditory models and human performance in tasks related to speech coding and speech recognition. In R. P. Ramachandran and R. Mammone, editors, Modern Methods of Speech Proceessing. Kluwer, 1995.
• O. Ghitza. Auditory models and human performance in tasks related to speech coding and speech recognition. IEEE Trans. Speech and Audio, special issue on Neural Networks for, S10.6, Jan. 1994. Invited paper.
• O. Ghitza. Processing of spoken CVCs in the auditory periphery: I. Psychophysics. J. Acoust. Soc. of America, 94(5):2507-2516, Nov. 1993.
• O Ghitza. Adequacy of auditory models to predict human internal representation of speech sounds. J. Acoust. Soc. of America, 93(4):2160-2171, April 1993.
• O. Ghitza and M. M. Sondhi. Hidden Markov models with templates as nonstationary states: An application to speech recognition. Computer Speech & Lang., 7(2):101-119, Jan. 1993.
• O. Ghitza. Auditory nerve representation as a basis for speech processing. In S. Furui and M. M. Sondhi, editors, Advances in speech signal processing, pages 453-485. Marcel Dekker, New York, 1992.
• O. Ghitza. Auditory neural feedback as a basis for speech processing. ICASSP '88, pages 91-94, April 1988.
• O. Ghitza. Temporal non-place information in the auditory-nerve firing patterns as a front-end for speech recognition in a noisy environment. Jour. of Phonetics, 16(1):109-124, Jan. 1988. Theme issue on the Representation of speech in the.
• O. Ghitza. Auditory nerve representation criteria for speech, analysis/synthesis. IEEE Trans. on Acous., Speech and Sig. Processing, ASSP-35(6):736-740, June 1987.
• O. Ghitza. Robustness against noise: the role of timing-synchrony analysis. ICASSP '87, pages 2372-2375, April 1987.
• O. Ghitza. Auditory nerve representation as a front-end for speech recognition in a noisy environment. Computer Speech and Language, 1(2):109-131, Dec. 1986.
• O. Ghitza and J. L. Goldstein. Scalar LPC quantization based on formant JNDs. IEEE Trans. on Acous., Speech and Sig. Processing, ASSP-34(4):697-709, Aug. 1986.
• O. Ghitza. Speech analysis/synthesis based on matching the synthesized and the original representations in the auditory nerve level. In Proc. ICASSP'86, pages 1995-1998, Tokyo, Japan, April 1986.
• O. Ghitza. A measure of in-synchrony regions in the auditory nerve firing patterns as a basis for speech vocoding. In ICASSP'85, pages 505-508, Tampa, FL, April 1985.
• O. Ghitza and J. L. Goldstein. JNDs for the spectral envelope parameters in natural speech. In R. Klinke and R. Hartmann, editors, Hearing - Physiological bases and psychophysics, pages 352-359. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1983.

Patents:

Issued:

• J. B. Allen and O. Ghitza. Analysis arrangement based on a model of human neural responsess. U.S. Patent 4,905,285, Issued: February 27, 1990.
• O. Ghitza, D. S. Kim and P. Kroon. Method And Apparatus For Estimating Subjective Audio Signal Quality From Objective Distortion Measure. U.S. Patent 6,609,092 , Issued: August 19, 2003.
• O. Ghitza. Method And Apparatus For Performing Audio Coding And Decoding By Interleaving Smoothed Critical Band Envelopes At Higher Frequencies. European Patent EP1158494 (link available Monday to Friday between 8.00 am and 18.00 pm CET), Issued: May 29, 2002.