The 2015 Speech Industry Luminaries: Dan Miller

THE INDUSTRY ILLUMINATOR 

Dan Miller

lead analyst and founder, Opus Research

While our Luminaries award is not a decoration for lifetime achievement, Dan Miller should be recognized as a steady fixture and guiding light in the speech technology industry since launching Opus Research in 1985. Few would argue that, since then, he has emerged as the industry's leading voice biometrics analyst. But it's what Miller has done during the past year that has earned him a Speech Technology Luminary award.

In November, his company launched its first voice biometrics market report, "Voice Biometrics Census: Global Tally of Voice Security and Authentication Implementations." The report is the result of a herculean effort that includes data gleaned from 10 years of voice biometrics deployments. It analyzes more than 150 voice biometrics implementations around the world, serving 70 million protected users.

This is in addition to his VBC (Voice Security & Authentication) conference—an event that showcases simple, secure, and trusted communications over the Web, mobile phones, and tablets. The event, held in New York in May, catered to professionals integrating voice into multilayered and multifactor communications for authentication and security.

And while he's known for his expertise in voice biometrics, he's not limited to it. In fact, Opus Research also covers conversational commerce, mobile and location technologies, and intelligent assistants. In the past year, his research firm invested heavily in the latter, hosting its first Intelligent Assistants Conference in September 2014. The event was dedicated to helping technology providers and customer experience professionals use natural language processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and real-time analytics to create computer systems that can reason and learn.

A prolific thought leader, Miller often shares his insights with industry and mainstream institutions, regularly speaking at the annual SpeechTEK conference and contributing to Speech Technology magazine articles. Additionally, as speech technology has become more mainstream, so has Miller, sharing his insights with Wired magazine earlier this year.

Needless to say, Miller has had a busy year. We're not sure how he's able to manage such a heavy workload, but he appears to be doing it with aplomb.