H Timothy Bunnell

Director, Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences

Director, Nemours Bioinformatics Core Lab
Head, Speech Research Lab
Principal Research Scientist

Degrees and Credentials:

PhD

Bio

Dr. Bunnell received his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University in 1983, concentrating in human speech perception and the acoustic properties of speech (acoustic phonetics). From 1983 to 1989, he worked as a Research Scientist in the Sensory Communication Research Laboratory (later Center for Auditory and Speech Sciences) at Gallaudet University conducting research on the application of digital speech processing techniques to hearing enhancement, primarily for acoustic hearing aid users. In 1989 he became the director of the Speech Processing Laboratory at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children where his research interests expanded to include text to speech synthesis and speech recognition. Dr. Bunnell is now the director of the Nemours Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences (CPASS) and head of the Speech Research Laboratory within the CPASS. Since 2000, he has also served as director of the Nemours Biomedical Research Department's Bioinformatics Core. The Bioinformatics Core maintains computing infrastructure for Nemours Biomedical Research, and provides expertise in applications development, biostatistics, data mining, and numerical analysis. Dr. Bunnell's primary research interests are in biomedical and clinical applications of speech technology for the diagnosis and remediation of hearing and speech disorders, particularly in pediatric patients.

Research Areas

Bioengineering/Biomedical Engineering

Bioinformatics/Clinical Informatics

Biostatistics/Biometrics

Neuroscience

Psychology, Cognitive

Speech Science

Location

Location:

Wilmington

Biosketch (PDF):

Bunnell Biosketch

CV (PDF):

Bunnell CV

Biosketch

Name:

H. Timothy Bunnell, PhD

Position Title:

Director, Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences, & Nemours Bioinformatics Core Lab

Education and Training

Institution	City	State	Degree	Month	Year	Field of Study
Institution: University of Maryland	City: College Park	State: MD	Degree: BS	Month: 05	Year: 1975	Field of Study: Psychology
Institution: The Pennsylvania State University	City: University Park	State: PA	Degree: MS	Month: 03	Year: 1978	Field of Study: Psychology
Institution: The Pennsylvania State University	City: University Park	State: PA	Degree: PhD	Month: 08	Year: 1983	Field of Study: Psychology

Personal Statement:

I received my Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from The Pennsylvania State University in 1983. After graduating, I worked as a Research Scientist in the Sensory Communication Research Laboratory (later Center for Auditory and Speech Sciences) at Gallaudet University from 1983 until 1989 conducting research on the application of digital speech processing techniques to hearing enhancement, primarily for acoustic hearing aid users. In 1989 I became the director of the Speech Processing Laboratory of the Applied Science and Engineering Laboratories at the Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children where my research interests expanded to include text to speech synthesis and speech recognition along with acoustic phonetics and speech processing. Since 1989, I have held a number of positions at AIDHC and am now the director of the Nemours Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences (CPASS) and head of the Speech Research Laboratory within the CPASS. From 2000, I have also served as director of the Nemours Biomedical Research DepartmentÕs Bioinformatics Core facility. The Bioinformatics core both maintains computing infrastructure for Nemours Biomedical Research, and provides expertise in biostatistics, data mining, and numerical analysis of all types of biomedical data. My current primary research interests continue to be related to biomedical and clinical applications of speech technology in both the diagnosis and remediation of hearing and speech disorders, particularly in pediatric patients. However, through the Bioinformatics core, I have developed interests in the human factors underlying the design of useful tools for biomedical research in areas that include tracking project effort, mentoring activities, and social scientific networking. These interests have been applied to a growing number of substantial applications, including the effort tracking system now used enterprise-wide by the Nemours Foundation for federally funded research.

Positions and Employment:

1983 – 1989 Research Scientist, Sensory Communication Research Laboratory, Gallaudet University
1989 – 1991 Adjunct Assistant Professor, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, University of Delaware
1991 – 2013 Research Associate Professor, Dept. of Computer and Information Science; Joint Appointment in Dept. of Linguistics; University of Delaware
2013 - present Adjunct Professor, Computer and Information Sciences; Joint Appointment in Linguistics, University of Delaware.
1989 – 1998 Director, Speech Research Program; Alfred. I. duPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, Delaware
1998 – present Head, Speech Research Laboratory; Alfred. I. duPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, Delaware
2000 – present Director, Bioinformatics Core Facility, Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington Delaware.
2005 – present Director, Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences, Nemours Biomedical Research and
Alfred I. duPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington Delaware.

Other Experience and Professional Memberships:

2000-2012 Editor (with Irene B. Vogel) Language and Speech
2000-2005 Vice President: Permanent Council for the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing
2000-2002 Editorial Consultant Assistive Technology
1996 General Chair: Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 96),
1995-2000 Member: Speech Communication Technical Committee, Acoustical Society of America.

Professional Affiliations and Activities:

Acoustical Society of America (Fellow)
International Speech Communication Association
ANSI S3 WG9.1 Committee on standards for measuring TTS intelligibility
ASHA -- American Speech Language and Hearing Association
IEEE

Current Research Support:

P20RR020173 Shaffer (PI) 9/23/04 to 9/22/15 NIH/NCCR Center for Pediatric Research The goals of this proposal are to develop a Pediatric Research Center at the Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children. The current grant is a 5-year renewal/extension of the original 5-year project. Funding supports mentoring activities and bioinformatics core facility activities, notably biostatistics, database design, and development of web-based applications. Role: Core Director & Mentor

R01HL114899 Blake (PI) 8/15/12 to 6/30/16. Use of Mobile Devices and the Internet to Streamline an Asthma Clinical Trial. Develop mobile electronic means of communication and information transfer to streamline the conduct of clinical research using an ongoing clinical trial, "Long-acting beta agonist step down study" for a side-by-side comparison of traditional and streamlined approaches. Role: Supervise development team to design and implement mobile device and web applications.

U54GM104941 9/25/12 to 5/31/18. Binder-MacLeod (PI). Center for Translational Research. Large infrastructure grant to support development of translational research capacity across three institutions in Delaware (University of Delaware, Christiana Healthcare, and Nemours Alfred I duPont Hospital for Children) and the Medical University of South Carolina. Role: Co-director of Communications responsible for development of web-based cross-institutional support applications.

Prior Research Support:

H133E080006 Bakke (PI) 9/1/08 to 8/31/13 US Department of Education/NIDRR Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Hearing Enhancement The major goal of this project is to develop a comprehensive center addressing needs of individuals with hearing impairment, their families, service providers, hearing aid and cochlear implant manufacturers, and researchers. SRL support on this grant will lead to development of text to speech synthesis and utterance verification software for aural rehabilitation as well as software for aural habilitation of pediatric CI recipients. Role: Project PI for 3 projects

IIS1116799 Patel (PI) 10 /1/11 to 9/30/13 NSF/CSIE HCC: Small: Modeling Acoustic and Articulatory Features for Hybrid Synthesis In this project, we will use conjoint acoustic and articulatory features to model fluent speech for a parametric text to speech synthesis system. Models trained on normally articulating children and adults will be mapped to vocal tract characteristics of dysfluent talkers, allowing us to synthesize fluent speech that sounds like it was produced by the dysfluent talkerÕs vocal tract. Role: Senior Technical Consultant & Subaward PI

Cluster Hassink (PI) 7/1/11 to 6/30/13 Nemours Internal grant award to study obesity prevention and weight management. Bioinformatics component will develop web and messaging services to support closer monitoring and more frequent care provider interaction with patients between clinic visits. Data elements captured within the interactive system will pull to Epic EMR system for ready access by primary care providers. Role: Co-investigator.

Unnumbered Morlet (PI) 6/1/09 to 12/31/10 FriedreichÕs Ataxia Research Alliance Auditory, Speech and Vestibular Abilities in Friedreich Ataxia Describe the hearing and speech deficits associated with Friedreich Ataxia in children and adults. Role: Co-Investigator

IIS0712821 Patel (PI) 7 /1/07 to 6/30/11 (no cost extension) NSF/CSIE Adapting a text to speech synthesizer to convey user identity Novel techniques are proposed to alter Concatenative TTS voices so they sound like other individuals. This would extend the capability of Concatenative TTS systems to individuals who are not able to record enough of their own speech to create a concatenative voice from scratch. Role: Consultant
Unnumbered London (PI) 3/1/10 to 2/28/11 Delaware Health Science Alliance Linking Genotype to Phenotype: A pilot project to create a research data warehouse of biospecimen nd omic information. Implementation of software and hardware to show feasibility of inter-institutional database structures, identify barriers to data sharing, and test approaches to data deidentification .

R42DC006193 Bunnell (PI) 6/1/06 to 5/31/10 NIH/NIDCD Personalized Synthetic Speech using ModelTalker: Development and Evaluation Type: Phase II STTR. Technology transfer grant to make further improvements to the ModelTalker synthesizer and InvTool voice recording program. This phase of the project will focus on improvements to the voice capture and generation stages including changes to the speech coding schemes presently used by ModelTalker. It will also involve development of a Windows CE compatible version of the synthesizer which can run on new AAC devices based on that operating system. Role: PI

R43DC008212 Pal (PI) 9/1/08 to 6/30/09 NIH/NIDCD Use of speech recognition technology for functional hearing assessment Apply Automatic speech recognition to administration and scoring of HINT test. Role: Co-Investigator

R21DC007466 Bunnell (PI) 4/1/05 to 3/31/07 (extension to 3/31/08). NIH/NIDCD Phenotypes and familiality in speech disorders A database of speech production, perception, and acoustic measures will be collected from 250 children along with family history data. HMM based acoustic analysis techniques will be used to characterize children in terms of acoustic phenotypes. These data will be compared to family history data. Role: PI

04/01/04 to 03/31/06 Nemours Research Programs Phonetic acquisition patterns in children with phonological disorders Detailed analyses of utterances recorded from children in the process of acquiring the /r/ - /w/ distinction in production. Will be followed by a prospective study to verify conclusions from the analysis of existing data. Role: Co-Investigator

R41DC006193 Bunnell (PI) 05/15/03 to 4/30/05 NIH Personalized Synthetic Speech Using ModelTalker: Development and Evaluation Phase I STTR project to demonstrate feasibility to commercialize the ModelTalker speech synthesis system for use in AAC devices. Role: PI

Departmental Unit:

Center for Pediatric Auditory and Speech Sciences

Labs:

Speech Research Laboratory (SRL)

Cores:

Biomedical Research Informatics Center

Scientist Networking And Profiling (SNAP)

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