Profile

My expertise is in speech technology, particularly speech synthesis and recognition. I am also versed in audio and biomedical signal processing and in the broader fields of signal processing, machine learning, and deep learning. I am enthusiastic about doing research and practical implementation of advanced signal processing and machine learning pipelines, as well as exchanging know-how with students and collaborators.

Highlights

Research

  • 110 scientific papers and 2 books in speech technology (TTS, ASR, prosody modelling, speaker recognition, voice forensics and transformation), and DSP, ML & DL in audio and biomedical signal processing
  • published in leading journals including IEEE TASLP, Speech Communication, and JASA, and flagship conferences, such as Interspeech
  • led and participated in 7 international and 4 national research projects
  • MSCA post-doc at GIPSA-lab, Grenoble-INP, France
  • research collaboration with McGill University, Canada, UCL, UK, Idiap, Switzerland, IBEB, Portugal

Industry

  • co-founder and ASR consultant at Speech AI, Skopje, Macedonia
  • served as CTO at ListenUp Technologies, Tel Aviv, Israel
  • R&D consultant for IBH-IMPEX, Germany, ReTell, UK, and Macedonian Gordian Technologies, ITEK Systems, Analitika, and Sentice
  • co-authored a speech processing patent

Data

  • prompt design and speech corpus recording and transcription
  • speech and audio data analysis, denoising and post-processing
  • a varied language portfolio including low-resource langugaes: English, French, German, Turkish, Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Macedonian
  • work with challenging audio data for forensics

Teaching

  • mentored 6 Master Students and more than 30 Bachelor students
  • mentored student team that won the IEEE Signal Processing Cup 2023 at ICASSP
  • mentored three student teams that won international Hardware&Software competitions
  • authored teaching materials for 3 courses

Organization

  • organized 90 talks and events as IEEE SP/EMB Chapter Chair
  • served as Technical Program Chair at IWSSIP 2023
  • organized WG and MC meeting as WG co-leader in COST Action a-STEP
  • helped organize 10 conferences
  • helped organize 6 student competitions, training schools and events

Code

Experience

Professor

Apr 2015 – present

Associate (2019) and Assistant professor (2015) teaching Digital Audio Processing, Electroacoustics, and Biomedical Electronics.

Research collaborator

Feb 2019 – present
McGill University
Montréal, Canada.

Deep learning based modelling of English intonation.

Post-doc

Sep 2017 – Jan 2019
GIPSA-lab, Grenoble INP, Grenoble, France

Modelling speech prosody using deep learning under the ProsoDeep project funded by the EU Horizon 2020 under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA).

Visiting Researcher

Apr 2019 – Mar 2017
IBEB, Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

Work on Medical Microwave Imaging using Deep Learning.

CTO

Jul 2016 – Sep 2017
ListenUp, Tel Aviv, Israel

Heading the development of algorithms for speech rate modification.

Research consultant

Jan 2015 – Sep 2017
Sentice, Skopje, Macedonia

Development of speech processing algorithms involving machine learning.

Visiting Researcher

Jul 2015 – Sep 2015
Idiap Research Institute, Martigny, Switzerland

Teaching courses in audio processing, electroacoustics, embedded systems, digital and analog electronics.

Teaching Assistant

Feb 2007 – Jun 2015

Teaching courses in audio processing, electroacoustics, embedded systems, digital and analog electronics.

Intern

Sep 2007 – Jan 2008
Hilti AG, Schaan, Liechtenstein

Signal processing algorithm development involving machine learning.

Projects

VALENCE

Dec 2020 – Jan 2023
IJS, SI, SCKR, SI, ETSMP, RS, Ilinden, MK

Advancing Machine Learning in Vocational Education, PI, funded by Erasmus+.

evoc-learn

Nov 2019 – Oct 2022
UCL, UK, TUD, DE, KMUTT, TH

High quality simulation of early vocal learning through neural models and articulatory synthesis.

ProsoDeep

Sep 2017 – Jan 2019
GIPSA-lab, Grenoble-INP, France

Research project focused on the development of deep variational models of speech intonation. Project funded by Horizon 2020, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship.

Speech Technology Research

Jun 2016 – May 2017
Retell Ltd., Sunbury on Thames, Middlesex, England

Industrial research project focused on the deployment of speaker recognition in call recording systems.

SP2

Apr 2014 – May 2016

Research project on physiologically plausible intonation modelling. Project funded by Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF).

Education

PhD in Technical Sciences

2014

Thesis title: Noise Robust Automatic Speech Recognition for the Use in Systems for Vocal Interaction

M. Eng. in Electronics

2011

Thesis title: Speech Synthesis System for Macedonian Based on Quasi-Diphones

B. Eng. in Electrical Engineering

2007

Thesis title: The preservation of sound

Skills

Signal Processing

Machine Learning

Deep Learning

Natural Language Processing

Python

Scientific
Numpy, SciPy, Pandas

ML & DL
scikit-learn, PyTorch, Keras

NLP
NLTK, SpaCy

Visualisation
Matplotlib, Seaborn, Bokeh, Plotly

Web
Pelican, Flask, Django

General

JS, React

HTML, CSS

LLMs

Git

Linux, Bash, Zsh

Neovim, Lua

Languages

Macedonian and other Slavic

English

German

French

Interests

  • Traditional music
  • Mountain hiking
  • Swimming
  • Books on personal and professional growth