Louis Pols

Timeline

1. 1964–1982

   Physics degree and vowel PhD

   He earns a physics degree at the Technological University in Delft in 1964 and works in the Speech and Hearing Department at TNO's Institute for Perception in Soesterberg from 1964 to 1982. In 1977, he completes a PhD at the Free University of Amsterdam on spectral analysis and identification of Dutch vowels in monosyllabic words, with R. Plomp as adviser. On a ZWO fellowship, he spends a year at the Speech Communication Research Lab and AT&T Bell Labs in 1978–1979.

2. 1982–2005

   Professor at Amsterdam

   At the University of Amsterdam, he becomes a full professor of Phonetic Sciences and director of its Institute of Phonetic Sciences in 1982. Paul Boersma succeeds him as professor in 2005.

3. 1988–1998

   President of ESCA

   From 1988 to 1998, he serves on ESCA's board as a co-founder, including as president from 1993 to 1997. In 1989, he chairs the association's Tutorial Day and Research Workshop on speech input/output assessment and databases and presents “Improving synthetic speech quality by systematic evaluation.”

4. 1996

   Phone duration for ASR

   In 1996, he coauthors research on modeling phone duration with the TIMIT database and its potential benefit for automatic speech recognition.

5. 1996–1998

   Dynamic vowels and speech synthesis

   In 1996, he coauthors a chapter on the acoustics and perception of dynamic vowel segments. In 1998, he proposes collaborative international and multilingual experiments for ESCA's Speech Synthesis Special Interest Group.

6. 2001

   ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement

   At Eurospeech 2001 in Aalborg, he receives the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement.

7. 2008

   One of ISCA's first Fellows

   In September 2008, he is elected as one of the first 12 ISCA Fellows at Interspeech in Brisbane.

8. As of October 2026

   Emeritus professor at Amsterdam

   As of October 2026, he is an emeritus professor of Phonetic Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.