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Phonetics Laboratory

 
Forensic speech science
Voice similarity
Automatic speaker recognition
Speech technology
Speaker characteristics

Biography

Linda Gerlach is a PhD candidate in Computation, Cognition and Language, supervised by Dr Kirsty McDougall. Her research focuses on the selection of similar speakers based on perceptual judgements and measured features for forensic applications. She completed her undergraduate degree in Language and Communication at Philips University Marburg (Germany), and obtained an MA degree in Speech Science with a focus on phonetics at the same university. Whilst on an internship at Oxford Wave Research and in collaboration with the phonetics laboratory of the University of Cambridge, she explored the perception of voice similarity based on listener ratings and output from an automatic speaker recognition system for her final MA project. During her MA degree, she also worked as a student assistant on Regionalsprache.de (REDE) projects at the Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas, which investigates modern regional languages of German.

Research

  • Forensic speech science
  • Voice similarity
  • Automatic speaker recognition
  • Speech technology
  • Speaker characteristics

Publications

Key publications: 

Gerlach, L., McDougall, K., Kelly, F., Alexander, A., & Nolan, F. (2020). Exploring the relationship between voice similarity estimates by listeners and by an automatic speaker recognition system incorporating phonetic features. Speech Communication, 124, 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2020.08.003 [pre-print]

Other publications: 

Gerlach, L., Coy, T., McDougall, K., Kelly, F., & Alexander, A. (2021). How does the perceptual similarity of the relevant population to a questioned speaker affect the likelihood ratio?, IAFPA conference proceedings 2021, Marburg/Germany (online).

Gerlach, L., McDougall, K., Kelly, F., & Alexander, A. (2021). How do automatic speaker recognition systems ‘perceive’ voice similarity? Further exploration of the relationship between human and machine voice similarity ratings (presentation). IAFPA conference proceedings 2021, Marburg/Germany (online).

Gerlach, L., Kelly, F., & Alexander, A. (2019). More than just identity: speaker recognition and speaker profiling using the GBR-ENG database (poster). IAFPA conference proceedings 2019, Istanbul/Turkey. (Best student poster award)

Gerlach, L., Kelly, F., & Alexander, A. (2019). One out of many: A sliding window approach to automatic speaker recognition with multi-speaker files (presentation). IAFPA conference proceedings 2019, Istanbul/Turkey.

Teaching and Supervisions

Teaching: 

2020-2022:       
Li1 (Sounds and Words) Supervisions - Section of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

Other Professional Activities

Research Scientist and QA Manager at Oxford Wave Research

PhD Student

Affiliations

Classifications: