Marc Swerts

Marc Swerts is a full professor at Tilburg University whose research on audiovisual prosody has relevance for spoken dialogue systems. A 2002 Tilburg project set out to model how visual, verbal, and lexical-syntactic cues shape an utterance's communicative function. His experiments showed how prominence cues and visual beats affect perception and speech acoustics. He became a professor at Tilburg in 2006 and was elected an ISCA Fellow in 2015; he received the Humboldt Research Award in 2019. In August 2026, he and colleagues reported that rising intonation and marked facial expressions reduced perceived certainty and, in most cases, increased recipients' variability in numerical interpretations of probability phrases.

Now at: Tilburg University
Badges: Loyal

Timeline

2002

Modeling audiovisual prosody

In 2002, he is the contact for Tilburg's VIDI project “Functions of audiovisual prosody,” which aims to compute an utterance's communicative function from visual, verbal, and lexical-syntactic cues.
2005

Prominence perception cues

In 2005, his experiment with Emiel Krahmer finds that listeners process mismatched auditory and visual accents more slowly than matching accents only when they judge the auditory accent as most prominent.
2006

Professor at Tilburg

In 2006, he is a professor at Tilburg's School of Humanities and Digital Sciences.
2007

Visual beats change speech acoustics

In 2007, he and Emiel Krahmer find that producing a visual beat affects the acoustic realization of co-occurring speech.
2015

An ISCA fellowship

In 2015, ISCA announces his election as a Fellow alongside Pascale Fung, Reinhold Häb-Umbach, Lori Lamel, and David Nahamoo.
2019

A Humboldt research stay

In 2019, he receives the Humboldt Research Award and begins a sponsored research stay at Saarland University's FR 4.7, Phonetik, hosted by Bernd Möbius.
August 2026

Nonverbal probability cues

In August 2026, he and coauthors Imke N.A. Spapens, Ruben D. Vromans, and Ruud M.F. Koolen report that rising intonation and marked facial expressions independently reduce perceived speaker certainty and, in most cases, increase recipients' variability in numerical interpretations of verbal probability information.
As of October 2026

Professor at Tilburg

As of October 2026, he is a full professor in Tilburg University's Department of Communication and Cognition; his research is relevant to spoken dialogue systems.