Carol Yvonne Espy-Wilson (born 1957) is an

electrical engineer Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the

University of Maryland The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the Univ ...

(UMD) at College Park. She received her

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Electrical Engineering from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1987.

Early life and education

Carol Yvonne Espy was born in 1957 in

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...

. She is the youngest of four children born to Mattie and Matthew Espy. Espy-Wilson attributes much of her success to her family. Espy-Wilson's family had high expectations for all the children, and Espy-Wilson was expected to

toe the line "Toe the line" is an idiomatic expression meaning either to conform to a rule or standard, or to stand in formation along a line. Other phrases which were once used in the early 1800s and have the same meaning were "toe the mark" and "toe the plan ...

. Calvin, seven years older brother, was Espy-Wilson's role model and advisor. Starting when she was five years old, Calvin would try to teach her the math he was learning in school. When Calvin graduated from

Georgia Tech The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Established in 1885, it has the lar ...

in Electrical Engineering, Espy-Wilson decided to major in Electrical Engineering, as well. Calvin graduated from Stanford University with his MS degree in Electrical Engineering and brought an application from Stanford home to Espy-Wilson and made sure that she filled it out when it was time for her to apply to schools. Espy-Wilson decided to attend

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and majored in Electrical Engineering, she obtained her BS degree from Stanford University in 1979. She decided to continue her studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for graduate school and obtained her

MS degree A Master of Science (; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree. In contrast to the Master of Arts degree, the Master of Science degree is typically granted for studies in sciences, engineering and medicine ...

in Electrical Engineering in 1981. Her master's thesis was entitled, “Effects of Noise in Signal Reconstruction from its Fourier Transform Phase”. Espy-Wilson received her “Electrical Engineer (EE)” degree from MIT in 1984. She received her Ph.D. in 1987 advised by Kenneth Stevens. Her doctoral dissertation was entitled, “An Acoustic-Phonetic Approach to Speech Recognition: Application to the Semivowels”.

Career

After receiving her

, Espy-Wilson continued her affiliation with MIT, first as a post-doctoral student and then as a research scientist and visiting scientist. She was on faculty at

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. BU was founded in 1839 by a group of Boston Methodism, Methodists with its original campus in Newbury (town), Vermont, Newbur ...

from 1990 to 2001 and is Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She directs the Speech Communication Lab at UMD. Espy-Wilson is the " rst African American woman, and first African American, in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, to achieve tenure & be promoted to Full Professor" at the University of Maryland. Espy-Wilson's research interests include: "the integration of engineering, linguistics and speech acoustics to study speech communication. She is developing an approach to

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

based on phonetic features, articulatory parameters and landmarks to better address variability in the speech signal. She also conducts research in the areas of speech production, speech enhancement, speaker recognition, single-channel speaker separation and language and genre detection in audio content analysis and forensics. A major focus of her research is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between articulation, acoustics and perception and to use this knowledge to develop effective speech technologies". Espy-Wilson is the founder of OmniSpeech, a start-up that offers technology to improve sound quality over cell phones and in hearing aids, among other devices. In 2008-2009, Espy-Wilson was named a Sargent-Faull Fellow at Harvard Radcliffe Institute, with a "focus on the noise robustness of a probabilistic landmark-based speech-recognition system." In 2022, she was named an

IEEE Fellow , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

, "for contributions to speech enhancement and recognition".

Personal

Espy-Wilson is married to John Silvanus Wilson Jr., who is the 11th President of

Morehouse College Morehouse College is a Private college, private, Historically black colleges and universities, historically black, Men's colleges in the United States, men's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, ...

in Atlanta and former Executive Director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU's). Together they have three children, two daughters and a son. Their two twin daughters, Ayana and Ashia, are 2011 alumnae of

and

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, respectively. Their son, John "Jay" Sylvanus Wilson, III, is an alumnus of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Espy-Wilson, Carol 1950s births Living people Stanford University School of Engineering alumni MIT School of Engineering alumni American electrical engineers Speech processing researchers University of Maryland, College Park faculty African-American women engineers 20th-century American women engineers 20th-century American engineers 21st-century American women engineers 21st-century American engineers African-American engineers Engineers from Georgia (U.S. state) 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women Fellows of the IEEE Year of birth missing (living people)