PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Fumitada Itakura

Also known as 板倉文忠

Fumitada Itakura is a speech-processing researcher whose work spans speech coding and recognition. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees at Nagoya University, joined NTT, and worked at Bell Labs. With Shuzo Saito, he developed a maximum-likelihood speech analysis-synthesis system in 1966, and he later developed the Line Spectrum Pair method. He received the C&C Prize in 2009 and ISCA's Medal for Scientific Achievements in 2017. As of September 2026, he is founding CEO of ASPROTEC Ltd.

Timeline

  1. 1963–1966

    Degrees and a speech system

    He earns undergraduate and graduate degrees from Nagoya University in 1963 and 1965. In 1966, he and Shuzo Saito develop a speech analysis-synthesis system based on maximum-likelihood spectrum estimation.

  2. 1968–1972

    Joining NTT and a doctorate

    He joins NTT's Electrical Communication Laboratory in Tokyo in 1968 and completes a PhD in speech processing in 1972.

  3. 1973–1975

    Bell Labs and speech recognition

    He works in the Acoustics Research Department at Bell Labs from 1973 to 1975. His 1975 paper applies the minimum prediction residual principle to speech recognition.

  4. 1975

    The Line Spectrum Pair method

    At NTT, he develops the Line Spectrum Pair (LSP) method to represent speech spectra for high-compression coding.

  5. 2009

    A C&C Prize

    In 2009, he receives the C&C Prize while serving as a professor at Meijo University and professor emeritus at Nagoya University.

  6. 2017

    An ISCA scientific medal

    In 2017, he receives ISCA's Medal for Scientific Achievements for his contributions to fundamental statistical algorithms in speech coding and recognition.

  7. September 2026

    Founding CEO at ASPROTEC

    He is founding CEO of ASPROTEC Ltd. in September 2026.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

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  1. Fumitada Itakura - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Early developments of LPC speech coding techniques isca-archive.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Oral-History:Fumitada Itakura - Engineering and Technology History Wiki ethw.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. US4092493A - Speech recognition system - Google Patents patents.google.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. LSP (Line Spectrum Pair): Essential Technology for High-compression Speech Coding ntt-review.jp. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. 2009 Recipients of C&C Prize candc.or.jp. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. ISCApad #225 services.isca-speech.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. Fumitada Itakura's email & phone number - Founding CEO at ASPROTEC,Ltd | SignalHire signalhire.com. Checked 19 October 2026.