Japan calls for York student

Posted on 8 March 2016

A University of York PhD student has been selected by the British Council Japan for a two month research fellowship with a Japanese university.

Amelia Gully

Amelia Gully, a third year PhD student in AudioLab, Department of Electronics, will attend Nagoya Institute of Technology as a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Summer Programme 2016.

Fostering research collaboration between the UK and Japan, the programme provides opportunities for PhD students from the USA and Europe to pursue research while immersed in Japanese culture.

Under the guidance of Professor Keiichi Tokuda, Amelia Gully will continue her work into speech synthesis systems through numerical modelling of the vocal tract. For those that have lost the ability to speak or for applications such as public transport announcements, this will enable more natural-sounding synthetic speech than is currently available.

Amelia Gully said: “The JSPS summer programme is a really exciting opportunity to combine my research on vocal tract modelling with research at the Nagoya Institute of Technology on dynamic aspects of speech. This project will provide a jumping-off point for further collaboration which will allow us to create a system capable of more natural sounding synthetic speech and so improve the lives of people around the globe.

“I am very much looking forward to exploring Japan and learning more about this historic and beautiful country, and particularly to staying with a local family at the start of the programme."

Her PhD is funded through the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Doctoral Training Partnership Award. Results of a preliminary study into voice modelling techniques were presented at the Pan-European Voice Conference (PEVoC) in Florence, Italy, in 2015.