Jont Allen

Biography

During his 32 year AT&T Bell Labs career (after 1998, AT&T Labs) Allen specialized in nonlinear cochlear modeling, auditory and cochlear speech processing, and speech perception. While at AT&T Allen wrote more than 50 sole-authored journal articles on hearing, cochlear modeling, signal processing, room acoustics, speech perception and the articulation index (AI, a.k.a. speech transmission index (STI), Speech intelligibility index (SII)). In 1982-1987 Allen he had primary responsibility with the development of the first commercial multiband wideband dynamic range compression (WDRC) hearing aid, later sold as the ReSound hearing aid. During this 5 years he was working closely with clinical audiologists and speech and hearing scientists, and with several hearing aid manufactures (Starkey, Phonak, Etymotic), who subsequently funded Allen's work. During this period Allen wrote the first DSP code and developed the first fitting system, based on loudness in 1/2 octave bands (LGOB) which was used by ReSound as their commercial fitting system for many years. He was also responsible for the first analog compression circuits used in the primary product, that was produced by AT&T for ReSound, at the Allentown PA silicon foundry. Starting in 1986, Allen developed one of the first systems for non-evasively evaluating cochlear hearing using distortion produce otoacoustic emissions (DPOAEs), known as the (Cub^eDis) measurement system, which for several years (1988-1995) was commercially sold by Etymotic research, and after that by Mimosa Acoustics, for which Allen serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). From 1998-2003, while at AT&T Labs, a spin off from Bell Labs, Allen worked on Loudness and consonant perception, which is a problem closely related to AI theory. In Aug. 2003 he join the ECE faculty, University of IL, Urbana where he teaches and works with his students on noninvasive objective diagnostic testing of cochlear and middle ear function, based on acoustic reflectance (aka impedance) methods of the middle ear, auditory psychophysics, speech processing for hearing aid applications (noise reduction and multiband compression), speech and music coding (bit-rate reduction) and speech perception (models of loudness and masking) and hearing aid transducer modeling. He is most actively working on the theory and practice of human speech recognition, for both normal and hearing impaired hearing, with the goals of improving hearing aid signal processing as well as automatic speech recognition robustness in the presences of noise and filtering. From 2003-present, Allen has a number of students active in various projects on speech perception, middle ear models and hearing aid signal processing (Allen's Research Group) In the last 10 years Allen and his students have collected several large databases of speech perception in noise, by normal and impaired human subjects. This work has resulting in many publications on human speech perception. From 2005-present Allen has also studied reading disabilities in young children. This work has been in collaboration with Prof. Cynthia Johnson of the UIUC Speech and Hearing Science Department (and many of her students).

Research Interest

Biomedical Imaging, Bioengineering, and Acoustics