William S. Meisel, Ph.D.
Backed by over 30 years of experience in Artificial Intelligence, including advanced speech and natural language interpretation technology and resulting products and markets, Dr. Meisel has been an independent consultant and publisher since 1991. Meisel ran a speech recognition company for a decade, and wrote the first technical book on machine learning early in his career.
Meisel is author of the recently published Evolution Continues: A Human-Computer Partnership. The book discusses the impact of our being able to connect with computers using human language, speech or text.
He published Speech Strategy News, a paid-subscription, no-ads newsletter on commercial developments in speech recognition for over 20 years.
Meisel is also Executive Director of the Applied Voice Input Output Society (AVIOS), a not-for-profit industry organization. In that role, is the program organizer for AVIOS’s Conversational Interaction Conference.
Prior to founding and running the speech recognition company (Speech Systems Incorporated) for ten years, Meisel created the Computer Science Division of a defense firm and built it up for ten years. Before that, Meisel was a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at USC, teaching courses in artificial intelligence and pattern recognition.
Meisel’s background includes a solid technical foundation. He has a BS from Caltech and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and over 60 publications including the first book on machine learning (Computer-Oriented Approaches to Pattern Recognition), technical and marketing articles, and twelve issued patents, the last issued in 2017. His PhD thesis was on a form of neural networks. He is the editor of two books on the Voice User Interface.
Experience
TMA Associates, Encino, CA, 1991 - Present: President of TMA Associates and Editor of LUI News, an industry newsletter published by TMA. Consulting and market research. TMA Associates does consulting on advanced speech natural language technology products, and AI technologies—market analysis, business planning, product design, product development, and financing sources. TMA has done consulting for dozens of clients, from large to small.
Applied Voice Input Output Society (Non-profit professional organization): Executive Director (continuing), organizes AVIOS’s Conversational Interaction Conference.
Speech Systems Incorporated, Tarzana, CA, 1981 - 1991: Dr. Meisel founded SSI in 1981 to develop a continuous speech recognition system. He was Chairman of the Board and President for most of this period. SSI developed and sold speech recognition systems for general applications and developed a Radiology Reporting System as a turnkey product. The company changed its name to SyVox after Dr. Meisel left and sold its assets after 20 years of existence.
Technology Service Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 1970 - 1981: Manager, Computer Sciences Division. TSC was a system integration and R&D firm. Dr. Meisel helped the company grow from five people to over 200; the company was eventually sold to Westinghouse. Dr. Meisel began his work in speech recognition at TSC through government contracts.
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, 1967 - 1970: Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering Department. Dr. Meisel helped set up the Computer Science Department. He introduced courses on Computer Design, Pattern Recognition, and Artificial Intelligence. Meisel wrote the first textbook on Computer Pattern Recognition.
