Published: May 24, 2004

Bryan Pellom, a research assistant professor in CU-Boulder's Center for Spoken Language Research and Thomas Zeiler, professor and chair of CU-Boulder's history department, have been awarded Fulbright Scholar grants to teach and conduct research internationally.

Pellom, an expert in speech recognition software and author of the large-vocabulary continuous speech recognition system, SONIC, which is used in many CSLR research projects, will travel to Finland in fall 2004.

With the award, which is co-sponsored by Nokia, Pellom will teach a course on speech recognition and statistical language modeling at the Helsinki University of Technology. He also will further CSLR's research in multilingual speech recognition and literacy tutors for children and second language learners by focusing on speech recognition and modeling of the Finnish language.

Zeiler, an expert in U.S. foreign policy, will travel to Tokyo to lecture and conduct research at the University of Tokyo and Japan Women's University during the 2004-05 academic year. He will teach courses on U.S. diplomacy, American history since 1868 and baseball. While in Japan, Zeiler also will begin research on a new book about World War II.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State. Established in 1946 under legislation introduced by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, the program's purpose is to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries. Grant recipients are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and because they have demonstrated extraordinary leadership potential in their fields.