Faculty
Jont Allen
Associate Professor
2061 Beckman Institute, MC-251
405 N. Mathews
Urbana, Illinois 61801
(217) 244-9567
Ph.D., The University of Pennsylvania, Electrical Engineering, 1970
Research Interests:
- Cochlear modeling: Mathematical models of cochlear function, including basilar membrane motion, biophysical models of outer hair cells; models of the micromechanics, including the tectorial membrane and cilia motions.
- Noninvasive diagnostic testing of the cochlear and middle ear: Otoacoustic emissions measured in the ear canal; noninvasive diagnositcs; distortion product measurements; SFOAE; impedance; power reflectance of the ear canal;
- Auditory psychophysics: Intensity just noticable difference (JND), speech psychophysics; confusion matricies; information processing by the auditory system
- Speech processing for hearing aid applications: Special signal processing techniques for removing reverberation and noise; multiband compression for loudness recruitment abatement;
- Articulation index modeling of confusion matrix measurements, of consonant vowel sounds, in noise
- Speech and music coding
- Human speech recognition: Reverse engineering, measuring and modeling speech cues used by the human auditory system, when recognizing speech in large amounts of noise and with filtering; Articulation index; confusion matricies; information processing by the auditory system with speech as the signal;
- Robust human speech recognition
- Modeling the middle ear in the time domain, with wave models. How does the eardrum transform the acoustic energy and funnel it into the cochlea?
- Models of the outer hair cells of the cochlea. Biophysical model of hair cell membrane mechanical properties, as a function of membrane voltage. (with paul Fahey, Univ. Scranton, physics dept.)
- Wave propagation in inhomogeneous media. Acoustic horns.
- Transducer physics and modeling (Loudspeakers)
- Evanescent wave propagation in horns
- Musical Acoustics (guitars, fiddles, some wind instruments)
- Music perception
For more information:
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Honors, Recognition, and Outstanding Achievements
- Phonak Faculty Award (2007, 2008)
- Visiting professor Kings College of London, Aug. 2007.
- IBM Faculty Award (2005)
- IEEE Third Millennium Award (2000)
- SoundID Scientific Advisory Board (California 1995-2000)
- 1991, International Distinguished Lecturer for the Signal Processing Society
- 1990 Osher Fellow, Exploratorium Museum San Francisco
- 1986-1988 Scientific Advisory Boards of Resound (the first company to introduce multiband compression into the hearing aid market)
- 1986, ASSP Meritorious Service Award
- 1985, Fellow, IEEE
- 1981, Fellow, Acoustical Society of America (ASA)
Honors, Recognition, and Outstanding Achievements for Teaching
- IEEE International Distinguished Lecturer for the Signal Processing Society (1991)
Honors, Recognition, and Outstanding Achievements for Public Service
- IEEE ASSP Society Award 1986 "for Chair of Publications (similar to Editor in Chief of IEEE-ASSP transactions) 1983-1985, EDICS classification system, Birth and development of the ASSP Magizine, General Chariman of ICASSP-1988"
Books Authored or Co-Authored (Original Editions)
- Allen, J. B. (2005); "Articulation and Intelligibility," Morgan and Claypool Inc., LaPorte, CO 80535 Peer reviewed monograph, ISBN: 1598290088; 130 pages of original material including literature survey back to 1900 of speech perception work, and a model of how the auditory system processes speech (800 sold so far)
Journal Articles
- Feipeng Li and Jont Allen. Speech perception and cochlear signal processing. IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, To appear, July 2009. Invited, accepted and in press.
- Feipeng Li and Jont B. Allen. Additivity law of frequency integration for consonant identification in white noise. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., Aug 2009.Accepted 5/11/09
- Travino, A, Colemann, T., Allen, J. "A Dynamical Point Process Model of Auditory Nerve Spiking in Response to Complex Sounds," Journal of Computational Neuroscience, Accepted for Publication, March 2009.
- S. A. Phatak, Y. Yoon, D. M. Gooler, and J. B. Allen. Consonant loss profilesfor hearing impaired listeners. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 2009. submitted 9/1208; Pending (revisions requested) 12/18/08.
- RH Withnell, PS Jeng, Kelly Waldvogel, Kari Morgenstein, and Jont B. Allen. An in-situ calibration for hearing thresholds. J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 2009. 123(3), 1605-11.
- PS Jeng, Jont Allen, JA Miller, and Harry Levitt., "Wideband power reflectance and power transmittance as tools for assessing middle-ear function," Perspectives on Hearing and Hearing Disorders in Childhood, 18(2):44-57, 2008. ASHA journal (http://journals.asha.org/perspectives/terms.dtl).
- S. Phatak, Andrew Lovitt, and Jont B. Allen., "Consonant confusions in white noise," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 124(2):1220-33, 2008.
- Marion S. Regnier and Jont B. Allen., "A method to identify noise-robust perceptual features: application for consonant /t/." J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 123(5):2801- 2814, 2008.
- Jont B. Allen, Wai-Yip Chan, and Stephen Voran. Editorial: Perceptual models for speech, audio and music processing. EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, 2007:1-2, December 2007
- Pierre Parent and Jont B. Allen, "Wave model of the cat tympanic membrane," J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 122(2):918-931, August 2007.
- Phatak, S. and Allen, J.B., "Consonant and vowel confusions in speech-weighted noise," J. of the Acoust. Soc. Am., 121(4):2312-26, April 2007
- Sen, D. and Allen, Jont B., "Functionality of cochlear micromechanics--as elucidated by the upward spread of masking and two tone suppression," Acoustics Australia, 34, 43-51, 2006.
- Allen, Jont B. and Jeng, Patricia S. and Levitt, Harry, "Evaluating Human Middle Ear Function via an Acoustic Power Assessment," Jol. of Rehabil. Res. Dev.,Jul vol 42(4), pp 63-78 (2005)
- J. B. Allen, "How do humans process and recognize speech?," IEEE Transactions on Speech and Audio, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 567-577, October 1994.
- J. B. Allen and P. F. Fahey, "Using acoustic distortion products to measure the cochlear amplifier gain on the basilar membrane," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 92, no. 1, pp. 178-188, July 1992.
- J. B. Allen and M. M. Sondhi, Cochlear macromechanics: Time-domain solutions, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 66, no. 1, pp. 120-132, July 1979.
- S. T. Neely and J. B. Allen, "Invertability of a room impulse response," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol. 66, pp. 165-169, 1979.
- J. B. Allen and L. R. Rabiner, "A unified approach to short-time Fourier analysis, synthesis," Proceedings of the IEEE, vol. 65, no. 11, pp. 1558-1564, November 1977.
- J. B. Allen. "Cochlear micromechanics - A mechanism for transforming mechanical to neural tuning within the cochlea," Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol 62, pp. 930-939, 1977.
- J. B. Allen, "Short-time spectral analysis, synthesis, with modifications, by discrete Fourier transform," IEEE Transactions on Acoustical Speech and Signal Processing, vol. 25, pp. 235-238, 1977.
- J. B. Allen, "On the aging of steel guitar strings," Catgut Acoustical Society Newsletter, 1976.
Professional Societies
Member of the editorial board of: EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech and Music Processing
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asmp/editors.html
- IEEE speech and language techincal committee (SLTC) representative in Speech Perception (2004-present)
- Acoustical Soc. of Am.: Active member on Publication Policy (2003-present)
- Acoustical Soc. of Am : Active member of Archives and History committee (2004-present)
- ICASSP General chair 1988 New York City