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Dedication in International Biographical Centre

Dr Joseph Di Martino, Fiba, the eldest son of a family of four children, Joseph di Martino has two brothers, Marc and Jean-Claude, and a sister, Françoise. His parents, Nonce Di Martino, a retired iron craftsman, and Gilda Falcone, are both of Italian origin. Joseph Di Martino was born on 16 august 1957 in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, where he spent his early childhood years until he reached the age of nine. In 1966 the whole family moved to the very lovely French Riviera town Nice, where he pursued his secondary education, completing it successfully in 1976. He then entered in a two-year preparatory class, in the Lycée Masséna in Nice, for candidates intending to take the entrance examination for France's prestigious Grandes Ecoles at which the country's engineering elite is educated. In 1978 he was admitted into the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Electricité et de Mécanique in Nancy. After brilliant academic work, he graduated as an Engineer in 1981 and the same year obtained his postgraduate degree, DEA (diplôme d'Etude Approfondie) in computer science at the Université Henri Poincaré Nancy I. From 1981-84 he prepared a Doctoral thesis under Professor Jean-Paul Haton and in April 1984 obtained a Doctorate in Engineering with honours from the jury that examined his work. In 1985 he was appointed Senior Lecturer (Maître de Conférence at the Université Henri Poincaré Nancy I. From 1985-87 he devoted his research efforts to the development of a computer model for automatic speech recognition. The result of this work was presented at the 1987 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. The originality of the proposed model lies in its capacity for self-adaptative leraning.

Joseph Di Martino then passed through a period of very serious health problems, which interrupted his research activities. It was not until 1990 that he was able to resume his work on the automatic speech recognition model by implementing a speaker-independent digits-recognition algorithm distinguished by its capacity for incremental learning. The algorithm was in advance of the mainstream of research efforts of the 1990s, which further underlines its originality. However, the severe restriction imposed on the parameter space in the initial model did not allow an immediate extension to the problem of recognising phonemes. This led Joseph Di Martino to shift from the problem of speech recognition to that of time-scale and spectral modifications of speech signals. After carefully studying works published by Michaël Portnoff and Stéphanie Seneff at the beginning of the 1980's, he introduced some ingenious modifications in the original Portnoff algorithm inspired by the works of Stéphanie Seneff. The proposed changes resulted in a remarkable improvement in the original algorithm, making it possible to modify the temporal characteristics of the vocal signal, while preserving its intelligibility. The signals synthesised with the enhanced Portnoff algorithm were of high grade quality even for large expansion factors.

In 1997 Joseph Di Martino began to attack the citadel of ``PITCH DETECTION'' and outlined an original algorithm for pitch estimation. Judging from preliminary results, in addition to being robust over voiced zones of the speech signal, the proposed algorithm is practically error-free. Adaptations are now under way to make the algorithm handle detection over non-voiced zones as well and will be published in the near future.

From 1985 onwards, after his appointment as Senior Lecturer, Joseph Di Martino pursued his research work with extraordinary energy, focusing on the problem of automatic speech processing and spending most of his week-ends in his laboratory. His Herculean efforts were crowned with success three times. To arrive at the result published in 1997, he worked every day from 5 am to 7 am on the implementation of his vocal signal algorithm, setting aside 30 minutes for correcting his students' papers and another 30 minutes to go over his lecture notes for 8am. This work regime was maintained for a period of four months in all.

Joseph Di Martino dedicates this biography especially to his father and mother, for their love and constant support and above all for having inculcated in him a love of work, a forceful and tenacious character and a remarkable resilience. By way of illustration, at the beginning of the 1980s they took the decision to devote their week-ends to building the villa of their dreams all by themselves. The couple kept to their task, working through rain or shine. They attained their goal in twelve years and the result of their Herculean efforts is a magnificent villa baptised ``Laura'', after their first granddaughter and first niece of Joseph Di Martino. The building work was physically demanding and there were moments of discouragement, but they never gave up until they had transformed their dream into reality. This example of tenacity and resilience is a constant source of inspiration for Joseph Di Martino in moments of difficulty.


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Joseph Di-Martino 2004-02-20