Dennis H. Klatt made significant contributions to the fields of speech production and synthesis. He conducted research in vocal tract modelling and furthered the understanding of how individual speech sounds are produced. Dr. Klatt also developed a rule system for constructing speech waveforms from abstract linguistic specifications. He sought to incorporate naturalness into his speech synthesis systems, and his work was applied commercially by the Digital Equipment Corporation in DECtalk. Dr. Klatt also pursued research in speech perception and the specification of acoustic properties for various phonetic distinctions.
Dr. Klatt received his undergraduate degree in 1961 from Purdue University and his Ph.D. in communication sciences from the University of Michigan in 1964. He joined MIT in 1965 as an Assistant Professor, and became a Senior Research Scientist in 1978. Dr. Klatt remained a member of the faculty until his death in 1988.
Information as of 1988