This recognition by EURASIP is not only a great personal honour, it is also an acknowledgement of the growing importance of speech technology in today's world.

Professor Steve Young

He will be presented with the EURASIP Technical Achievement Award at the European Signal Processing Conference in Marrakech, Morocco, later this summer.

The award honours a person who, over a period of years, has made outstanding technical contributions to theory or practice in technical areas within the scope of the Society, as demonstrated by publications, patents, or recognized impact in this field. In announcing the award, Patrick A. Naylor, EURASIP Awards Chairman, said that Professor Young was being honoured for his "Contributions to the development of spoken language systems including speech recognition, speech synthesis and dialogue management".

Steve Young is Professor of Information Engineering in the Department's Information Engineering Division. He has served as Chair of the School of Technology, was a member of the University General Board and has served as an elected member of the University Council. He is currently Senior Pro-Vice Chancellor responsible for Planning and Resources. His main research interests lie in the area of spoken language systems including speech recognition, speech synthesis and dialogue management.

Commenting on his EURASIP award, Professor Young said: "Speech technology is an interdisciplinary subject spanning engineering, computer science, mathematics and linguistics and as such it is often overlooked by mainstream engineering disciplines such as signal processing. This recognition by EURASIP is therefore not only a great personal honour, it is also an acknowledgement of the growing importance of speech technology in today's world.

"Previous winners of this award include some of the major figures in signal processing such as Djuric, Vetterli, and Mitra, and to be ranked amongst them is a great honour."

Professor Young is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce ( RSA). In 2004, he was a recipient of an IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Achievement Award; in 2008 he was elected Fellow of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) ; and in 2010, he received the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement.