History of Speech and Language Technology

Graeme Clark is the Director of The Bionic Ear Institute and an Honorary Laureate Professorial Fellow of the University of Melbourne. He is responsible for the primary research and development of the multiple-channel cochlear implant, an implanted electronic hearing device which has provided acoustic input to severely deaf children and adults through electrical stimulation of the hearing nerves in the cochlea. His research into electronic implantable hearing devices began in 1967, leading to his becoming the foundation Professor of Otolaryngology at The University of Melbourne in 1970. Following his group's successful first hearing implant in 1978, The University of Melbourne, the Australian Government and Nucleus (a group of commercial medical companies) established Cochlear Ltd. (1982) to pursue worldwide commercial operations. In 1984, The Bionic Ear Institute was founded to support research on deafness and on the improvement of the bionic ear. Professor Clark is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Society of Medicine in London, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and of the Australian Acoustical Society. Among his many honors was his award in 1984 of Australia's highest civil honor, the Companion of the Order of Australia, for services to medicine and to science and of the Prime Minister's Prize for Science, Australia's pre-eminent award for excellence in science.

Additional information on Professor Clark can be found at:
http://www.cochlear.com/115.asp
and at:
http://www.bionicear.org/people/clarkg/

An interview was conducted with Professor Clark at Interspeech 2005, the 9th European Conference on Speech Communication and Technology in Lisbon, Portugal, September 4-8, 2005, by Dr. Janet Baker. The text of this interview has not yet been transcribed, but a brief excerpt of the recorded interview is available.

Brief excerpt of recorded interview.