Speech Technology Industry Names Top Performers for 2003

Each year the speech technology industry recognizes significant contributions and achievements of individuals and companies within the industry. The Top Ten Leaders in Speech and the Speech Solutions Awards are sponsored by Speech Technology Magazine and selected by their peers in an online poll. The awards were presented Wednesday at the SpeechTEK Gala and Awards Ceremony sponsored by ScanSoft and Partners (Nortel, Cisco, Genesys, VoiceGenie and Convergys). The 9th Annual SpeechTEK Exposition and Educational Conference is being held this week at the New York Marriott Marquis. After nominations are submitted to Speech Technology Magazine, members of the industry vote online at to select the award recipients. The Speech Solutions Awards are presented to companies for outstanding accomplishments bringing new products and services to the marketplace:

Best Automated Speech Recognition (ASR) Solution - Nuance
Best Text-to-Speech (TTS) Solution - ScanSoft
Best Verification Solution - Nuance
Best Embedded Solution - ScanSoft
Best Input Device Solution - Speech Technology Center
Best Persona/Personality Solution - Nuance for Bell Canada's Emily
Best Voice Platform/Carrier - Brooktrout Technology for TR1000
Best Voice Platform/Enterprise - Nortel Networks
Best Packaged Speech Application - Nuance for Call Steering 1.0

The Top Ten Leaders in Speech are recognized as the 10 most influential people in the speech technology industry over the previous year. The 2003 recipients are:

• Bruce Balentine, executive vice president and chief scientist, Enterprise Integration Group
  Steve Chambers, general manager, Network Speech Solutions, ScanSoft
  Dr. Mike Cohen, co-founder, Nuance
  Dr. James Larson, manager, Advanced Input/Output, Intel
  Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, corporate vice president, Natural Interactive Services Division, Microsoft
  Dr. Judith Markowitz, president, J. Markowitz and Associates
  Dr. William Meisel, president, TMA Associates
  Stuart Patterson, president, ScanSoft
  Paul Ricci, chief executive officer, ScanSoft
  Lynda Kate Smith, vice president and chief marketing officer, Nuance.

Speech Technology Magazine awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Janet Baker, co-founder, president and later chairman & CEO of Dragon Systems, which produced Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the world's first general-purpose, natural language, continuous speech dictation system. Dragon Systems grew to nearly $70 million in annual revenue and 380 employees. Prior to founding Dragon, Dr. Baker was vice-president of Verbex and previously, a research staff member at IBM's T. J. Watson laboratory. Dr. Baker received her Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University.

"The award recipients for 2003 are providing the innovations and energy that are fueling the growth of the speech technology industry," says John Kelly, publisher and editor-in-chief of Speech Technology Magazine. "Recognition by their peers in the industry certainly puts an exclamation point on their accomplishments."