Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics

Academic experience 

• Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics - Charles University in Prague 
  Assistant Professor: January 2012 -- present
  Senior Research Associate: September 2011 -- December 2011
  • Development of statistical methods for dialogue systems. 
• Dialogue Systems Group - University of Cambridge 
  Research Associate: September 2008 -- August 2011
  • Research into semantic parsing and parameter learning for spoken dialogue systems.
  • The article on "Natural Belief-Critic: a reinforcement algorithm for parameter estimation in statistical spoken dialogue systems" (F. Jurčíček et al.) received the best paper award at the Interspeech 2010 conference in Tokyo, Japan.
• Center of Applied Cybernetics - University of West Bohemia 
  Research Assistant: August 2002 -- August 2008
  • Designed and implemented the LVCSR decoder for Czech Language.
  • Designed and organized semantic annotation of the human-human train timetable dialogue (HHTT) corpus (3000 dialogues).
  • Implemented a semantic parser for the HHTT corpus. 
• Center for Language and Speech Processing - The Johns Hopkins University 
  Visiting Scholar: February -- December 2004
  • Built a new baseline ASR system for the Czech MALACH (Multilingual Access to Large spoken ArCHives) project. 
  • Evaluated performance of MFCC and PLP front-ends for broadband data (44kHz).
  • Evaluated performance of colloquial and formal language models for Czech language.
• Center of Computational Linguistics - University of West Bohemia 
• Research Assistant: May 2001 -- August 2002
  • Implemented a software layer between a telephone dialogue system and telephone cards based using TAPI and CAPI communication protocols.
  • Designed and implemented a finite state grammar compiler for automatic speech recognition.

Industry experience

• Department of business and system analysis - Cleverlance Enterprise Solution a.s. 
  Business system analyst: January 2008 -- August 2008 
  • Responsible for software requirement specification, analysis and early project cost estimation and planning.
  • Projects: Revenue Assurance Tool - DHL Information Services (Europe) s.r.o, Contact center - Vodafone Czech Republic a.s.
• Department of software development - ANECT a.s. 
  Business system analyst: September 2006 -- December 2007
  • Responsible for software requirement specification, analysis and early project cost estimation and planning.
  • Projects: Electronic operational documentation – Ministerstvo práce a sociálních věcí, Call center statistics – Allianz pojišťovna a. s., Call center statistics – Pražská plynárenská a.s.
• Speechtech s.r.o - www.speechtech.cz 
  Researcher/Developer: 2001 -- 2004
  • Contributed to core design of the internally developed speech recognition engine. 
  • Ported the engine to Linux and IRIX (SGI O2) platforms.
  • Contributed to speech synthesis integration.

Teaching

• 2013 - present - Summer semester, Lecturing, NPFL108 - Bayesian inference, Charles University in Prague
• 2012 - present - Summer semester, Lecturing, NPFL099 - Statistical dialogue systems, Charles University in Prague
• 2009 - 2010 - Lent term, Supervising students - 3F6 – Software Engineering and Design, University of Cambridge
• 2009 - 2010 - Michaelmas term, Supervising students - 3F5 – Computer and Network Systems, University of Cambridge
• 2006 - Summer semester, Teaching assistant, MATLAB and Simulink, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen
• 2005 - Summer semester, Teaching assistant, Basics of MATLAB, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen

Research interests 

• Spoken dialogue management
• Reinforcement learning
• Spoken language processing and understanding
• Computational linguistics

Professional service

• SIGDIAL 2015, Local Chair
• IEEE ASRU, 2015, Programme Committee member
• IEEE SLT, 2014, Reviewer
• EACL DM, 2014, Programme Committee member
• MLIS, 2012, 2013, 2014, Programme Committee member
• IEEE ASRU, 2013, Programme Committee member
• IEEE J-STSP, 2012, Reviewer
• Springer JMLC, 2012, Reviewer
• ACM TSLP Special issue: "Machine Learning for Robust and Adaptive Spoken Dialogue Systems", 2010, Reviewer 
• IEEE SLTC Newsletter, 2009, Reporter

Achievements

• Awarded for supervising Ondrej Klejch - Ondrej got the CZ.NIC aword for his master thesis in the ACM-SPY Czech republic competition.
• Received the best paper award for the article on "Natural Belief-Critic: a reinforcement algorithm for parameter estimation in statistical spoken dialogue systems" ( F. Jurčíček et al.) at the Interspeech 2010 conference in Tokyo, Japan.
• Received the dean's award for scientific achievements, 18.10.2007, Pilsen, Czech Republic.
• Awarded for supervising Jan Švec, the finalist of the IT master thesis of the year 2007 , 20.9.2007, Prague, Czech Republic.

Grants 

• Modern Bayesian methods in machine learning (PI, 2013, FRVŠ 182/2013 B6 c)
• Development of statistical methods for spoken dialogue systems (PI, 2012-2016, Program NAVRAT, Grant No. LK112210)
• Data preparation for dialog draft using spoken language recognition (co-investigator, MŠMT ČR FR VŠ G1/F966, 2002)
• Noise compensation in automatic speech recognition systems of spoken Czech (co-investigator, MŠMT ČR FR VŠ G1/F920, 2001)

Invited Talks

• Extended Hidden Vector State Parser, Machine Intelligence Laboratory Speech Seminars, University of Cambridge, UK, 2008. 
• Studentský projev, Slavnostní zasedání vědecké rady FAV. Plzeň, Czech Republic, 2001.
• Chyby grafických kalkulátorů, 7. setkání učitelů matematiky všech typů škol, Plenární přednáška, Mariánské lázně, Czech Republic, 2000.
• Chyby grafických kalkulátorů aneb: Ne vše, co je vidět, je pravda a ne vše, co je pravda, je vidět. Mladý Sisyfos, Přednášky z matematiky a fyziky, II. cyklus - Pandořiny skříňky, Plzeň, Czech Republic, 1999.

Extra activities

• Organised the Prague's event of No Más FARC happening http://www.colombiasoyyo.org/ , 4.2.2008, Prague, Czech Republic. Svět demonstroval za mír v Kolumbii. Praha se přidala . video

Open source projects

• Alex, 2011 - present
• Transformation-based learning for Semantic parsing, 2008-2009 
• Extended HVS parser, 2005-2008
• Dialogue act editor, 2005-2006
• PyCrop, 2005
• Automated testing of hamiltonian closures, 2002

Other projects

• Gmail Backup, 2008-2010
• All Internet TV, 2008-2010