Eric Keller, PhD.
Full Professor (retired)
Distiction: Professeur honoraire, Université de Lausanne
Born in Basel, Switzerland, and educated in Switzerland, the U.S., the Netherlands, Canada, and Germany, Eric Keller obtained a PhD. in Linguistics with a specialisation in psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics from the University of Toronto in 1975.
He deepened his interests in the neurosciences with a postdoctorate in motor physiology at the University of Ulm (1976-1978) and a second course in clinical psychology at McGill and Concordia universities in Montreal (1979-1983) which he completed with “all but dissertation” (ABD). From 1978-1990, he taught psycholinguistics, phonetics and computer science at the University of Quebec at Montreal. In 1991, he founded the Section for Computer Science and Mathematical Methods, Faculté des Lettres, at the University of Lausanne (now integrated into Section des sciences du langage et de l'information link).
In both universities, he obtained the equivalent of "full professor" status. At the University of Lausanne he also obtained the distinction of "Professeur honoraire" (https://www.unil.ch/sli/fr/home/menuinst/nouvelle-page-collaborateurs.html) for work of excellence in psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics and artificial intelligence. In 2008 Eric Keller was furthermore granted this prestigious distinction for his various responsibilities in his 17 years at the University of Lausanne.
In research, his interests revolved around the brain sciences and artificial intelligence. Initially he was concerned with the psycho- and neurolinguistic modelling of prosodic and acoustic structures of speech in normal and brain-damaged speakers (aphasia and dysarthria). This part of his career was marked by his co-development of an ultrasound measurement device for tongue action in speech, and by his explorations of the details of lingual speech motor control in normal and pathological speakers.
He subsequently became known in the speech community as the author of a speech analysis program called "Signalyze". This user-friendly program permitted researchers to discover the details of the acoustic and articulatory structure of speech by simple, personal exploration.
During the 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century, he directed and performed fundamental research in artificial intelligence, particularly in speech analysis and speech synthesis. He is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of well over 100 publications in this domain.
Between 1997 and 2001, he chaired a European COST project involving 17 countries and some 30 laboratories in the area of improvements in speech synthesis (COST 258). He is a recipient of the Kay Elemetrics Award, attributed on recommendation of the International Society for Phonetic Sciences (ISPhS) for his work in the phonetic sciences.
Currently he dedicates most of his time to the composition of classical music. Eric Keller is now best known for Neoclassix.info, found at https://neoclassix.info/index.php/en/. This work involves working with "virtual instruments", explained here. This free service offers novel musical creations in the classical style and lesser known meritorious compositions. These lesser known elements of the classical repertoire are currently threatened in the prevailing financial climate.
