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Google research awards for SA duo

23 April 2009

Two researchers from South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have won Google Research Awards, together worth R1.2-million, for their work in human language technologies and wireless and mobile communication systems.

Professor Etienne Barnard of North West University and the CSIR's Dr Fisseha Mekuria, formerly of Uganda's Makerere University, now join an elite group whose research efforts have been identified for support by Google's programme to develop the best, most usable methods of information access.

The CSIR said in a statement this week that both researchers plan to use a significant part of their awards for the support of students at these universities.

Search engine giant Google uses its research awards to promote interaction between itself and academia in areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, mobile computing, speech and human-computer interaction.

Voice-based information access

Barnard's award-winning project targets voice-based information access for Bantu languages, most of which are "tone languages", using tone to distinguish words.

Human language technology applications, such as speech-driven, telephone-based information systems, rely on text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) to create spoken responses by computer, while automatic speech recognition (ASR) is a machine-driven technology by which natural speech is interpreted.

Both high-quality TTS and large-vocabulary ASR for the Southern Bantu languages therefore require pronunciation dictionaries with additional tone information.

Barnard aims to use a variety of mechanisms, including machine-learning techniques, cross-language induction and conventional manual transcription, to create such tone dictionaries for the Sotho languages (Southern Sotho, Northern Sotho and Setswana).

Mobile computing

Mekuria's Google project tackles the development of an African mobile content and service provider sector.

"The mobile phone has become a powerful portable multimedia computer, and is an important link in the convergence of information and communications technologies and services for many people in the developing world," says Mekuria.

"However, to maintain mobile technology and services growth in Africa and migrate towards more relevant data services such as mobile health, mobile learning, mobile payment and so on, we need to complement voice and SMS services with mobile web services."

The challenges to be overcome in doing this, says Mekuria, revolve around affordable infrastructure, reliability and security features, and human resources to develop the necessary localised services and content.

Local mobile content

According to Mekuria, the emergence of a local mobile content and service provider sector in Africa, supported by incubation schemes, is a crucial milestone for employment creation and economic development.

His project will involve establishing a university curriculum and a research laboratory to support mobile service and content development in Africa.

"A research group, in collaboration with local universities, in mobile computing technology and services, will guarantee the sustainability and future development of the project," he says.

"The success of such a programme will guarantee successful diffusion and continued growth of the mobile technology and services on the African continent. Stakeholders such as network and service providers, regulatory authorities, research institutions and the business community have an important role to play."

Mekuria has lead a number of research projects on innovative mobile technology and secure mobile services for emerging African markets. During his time as a senior research scientist with the Ericsson Mobile Communications R&D; Lab in Sweden, he developed 12 US and European patents in the areas of wireless and mobile communication platforms and systems.

SAinfo reporter