1. Curriculum Vitae
1. PERSONAL INFORMATION:
Name: Dr. Sherrie Ellen Shammass (Shaunie)
Address: 18/2 Ephraim St., Gedera, Israel, 7058521.
Phone: 972-8-8693152; Mobile: 972-54-4588402
E-mail: shammass.shaunie@gmail.com
Education: PhD, Linguistics, U. of Alberta, Canada
2. PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
Company: SpeakingPal Ltd.
Job Title: VP Linguistic Innovation (2009 – present)
Responsibilities:
; Key linguistic, pedagogical and UI planning, decision-making and implementation for
creating mobile education English language learning products that provide pronunciation
feedback on users’ speaking skills using Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
; Chief linguistic advisor for development of Israel’s Aviation English Test of Oral
Proficiency for all pilots and air traffic controllers in accordance with ICAO
requirements
; All content development, including multi-media production, for various mobile platforms
; Marketing, PR, lead generation, company website blogs and prize nominations
; Interface with ETS (Educational Testing Services) and other third parties for co-
production of products
Company: Private Linguistic and Speech Analysis Consultant (2006-present)
Projects:
; Nice Systems (R & D): speech analytics, speech recognition, emotion detection, semantic
lexica, led groups of annotators and linguists for call center annotation and production of
pronunciation lexica in several languages
o Patent: A Method and Apparatus for Temporal Speech Scoring (US Patent
Application No. 13/110,940, Inventers Sherrie Shammass et al.)
o Linguistic Expert for several Israeli Ministry of Science R&D Projects
; Edusoft Ltd. (R & D, Product Development): creation of educational software using
automatic speech recognition, database preparation, diagnostic test development,
evaluation and quality control, creation and monitoring of e-learning courses for accent
reduction and pronunciation
; K Dictionaries Ltd.(Business and Product Development): project development, multi-
lingual lexica, multi-lingual editorial input tools, academic director of worldwide-based
internship program
Company: NSC Natural Speech Communication Ltd., Rishon LeZion, Israel (1995-2006)
Job Title: Linguistic Expert
Responsibilities:
; Participation in European Commission projects (6th
Framework)
o LC-Star (www.lc-star.com) and TC-Star-P consortiums: Work-package manager for
specification, creation and implementation of validation criteria and
standardization for corpora, lexica and other linguistic resources (13 languages);
development of several large linguistic resources for ASR, Text to Speech, and
Speech Translation.
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2. o OrienTel (http://www.speechdat.org/ORIENTEL/ ): Creation of large linguistic
speech databases for ASR (Hebrew and Levantine Arabic).
o Speecon (www.speecon.com): Creation of large linguistic speech databases for
ASR for consumer devices (English).
; Israeli Ministry of Science R&D Projects: Lead linguist for development of Hebrew
speech databases for ASR
; In-house linguistic development including:
o Coordinate working teams, including subcontracting, for developing linguistic
resources and databases
o Specification and overall development of all linguistic databases including
corpora, translation, lexica, and speech recordings in various telephony and other
environments (English, Hebrew)
o Testing and evaluation of adaptation methods to various acoustic environments
o Automatic pronunciation generation and grammar development (US-English,
UK-English, Russian, Turkish, Greek, Spanish dialects, Arabic and Hebrew)
o System dialogue management (English)
o Documentation and procedural improvements of all projects
Company: Digipeech Ltd, Ranana, Israel (1999-2001), formerly called DSP Solutions, Ltd,
Ramat Gan, Israel, (1994-1995)
Job Title: English Linguistic Expert
Responsibilities:
; Overseeing linguistic preparation and collection of spoken databases useful for
preparation of pronunciation education programs, including a specially designed
children's database
; Script writing of educational software for English language learners of various language
backgrounds
; Supervision of a multimedia project for teaching English pronunciation
; Evaluation of the automatic pronunciation program
Company: Sesame Systems Ltd., Ramat-Gan, Israel (1984-1987)
Job Title: English Linguistic Expert
Responsibilities:
; Preparation of speech database for automatic speaker recognition
; Analysis of phonetic dissimilarity for password selection
; Evaluation of speech and speaker recognition programs
3. TEACHING EXPERIENCE:
Institution: Bar-Ilan University, Dept. of English, Israel.
Position: Lecturer (1984-2000)
Institution: Levinsky College, Dept. of English, Israel, Academic Retraining Program
Position: Lecturer (1990-1995)
Institution: Beit Berl College, Dept. of English, Israel
Position: Lecturer (1991-1994)
4. PASSIONATE HOBBIES
; Music – piano, composition of classical music chamber works, which I made into a
CD: http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/ShaunieShammass as well as a full symphony for
orchestra and storyteller (written in the style of Peter and the Wolf)
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3. ; Artists – made the first open house artist fair in an Israeli city in Gedera, 2004, with
over 4000 people attending (there were actually traffic jams in Gedera!!)
; Writing – am currently writing two books, one for family caretakers of the mentally
ill, and one that follows my emotional journey taking care of my own ill son
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