Professor Jon Barker

PhD

School of Computer Science

Personal Chair

School Ethics Lead

Member of the Speech and Hearing (SpandH) research group

Jon Barker headshot
Profile picture of Jon Barker headshot
j.p.barker@sheffield.ac.uk

Full contact details

Professor Jon Barker
School of Computer Science
Regent Court (DCS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
Profile

Professor Jon Barker is a member of the Speech and Hearing Research Group. He has a first degree in Electrical and Information Sciences from Cambridge University, UK. After receiving a PhD from the University of Sheffield in 1999, he worked for some time at GIPSA-lab, Grenoble and IDIAP research institute in Switzerland before returning to Sheffield where he has had a permanent post since 2002.

His research interests lie in noise-robust speech processing. Key application areas include distant-microphone speech recognition, speech intelligibility prediction and improved speech processing for hearing-aid users.

Research interests

Professor Barker’s research interests are focused around machine listening and the computational modelling of human hearing. A recent focus has been on modelling speech intelligibility, ie can we predict whether or not a speech signal will be intelligible to a given listener?

This understanding will help us produce better signal processing for application such as hearing aids and cochlear implants. Another strand of his work is about taking insights gained from human auditory perception and using them to engineer robust automatic speech processing systems.

Publications

Journal articles

Book chapters

Conference proceedings

Posters

  • Alghamdi N, Maddock S, Brown GJ & Barker J (2015) A comparison of audiovisual and auditory-only training on the perception of spectrally-distorted speech. 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. RIS download Bibtex download

Theses

  • Barker J (1998) The relationship between auditory organisation and speech perception: Studies with spectrally reduced speech. RIS download Bibtex download

Other

  • Christensen H, Barker J, Lu Y-C, Xavier J, Caseiro R & Araújo H (2009) POPeye: Real-time, binaural sound source localisation on an audio-visual robot-head. RIS download Bibtex download
  • Christensen H & Barker J (2009) Simultaneous Tracking of Perceiver Movements and Speaker Changes Using Head-Centered, Binaural Data. RIS download Bibtex download

Preprints

Grants
Professional activities and memberships
  • Member of the Speech and Hearing research group
  • Co-founder of the CHiME series of International Workshops and Robust Speech Recognition Evaluations, 2011 onwards.
  • EURASIP Best Paper Award, 2009; for best paper in Speech Communication during 2005.
  • ISCA Best Paper Award, 2008; for best paper in Speech Communication 2005-2007.