Research Interests

Avatar (talking head) synthesis, speech synthesis, data driven statistical modeling, machine learning, pattern recognition

Honors & Awards

The 3D Photo-Real talking head project won “Demo of the Year”@2011 in MSRA, which is also shown at Craig Mundie’s Techforum 2011, Techfest 2011 (including public day), Exec Retreat 2011, MGX 2011, with great press coverage (MSNBC, PCWorld, CNET, The Seattle Times, etc.).
Dictionary Talking Head is selected as MSR highlighted 18 “tech transfers” (e.g. significant product impact) of 2010 from the worldwide labs (reported by PCWorld).
The Photo-Real talking head project won NO.1 in Audio-Visual consistency test in LIPS Challenge 2009, an international audio/visual lips rendering contest held in the AVSP Workshop.

Publications

Lijuan Wang, Wei Han, Frank Soong, and Qiang Huo, Text-driven 3D Photo-Realistic Talking Head, in INTERSPEECH 2011, International Speech Communication Association, September 2011
King Keung Wu, Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, and Yeung Yam, A SPARSE AND LOW-RANK APPROACH TO EFFICIENT FACE ALIGNMENT FOR PHOTO-REAL TALKING HEAD SYNTHESIS, in ICASSP 2011, IEEE, 22 May 2011
Lijuan Wang, Yi-Jian Wu, Xiaodan Zhuang, and Frank Soong, SYNTHESIZING VISUAL SPEECH TRAJECTORY WITH MINIMUM GENERATION ERROR, in ICASSP 2011, IEEE, 22 May 2011
Lijuan Wang, Wei Han, Xiaojun Qian, and Frank Soong, Photo-Real Lips Synthesis with Trajectory-Guided Sample Selection, in Speech Synthesis Workshop (SSW7), International Speech Communication Association, 27 September 2010
Xiandan Zhuang, Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, and Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, A Minimum Converted Trajectory Error (MCTE) Approach to High Quality Speech-to-Lips Conversion, in INTERSPEECH 2010, International Speech Communication Association, 22 September 2010
Lijuan Wang, Wei Han, Xiaojun Qian, and Frank Soong, Synthesizing Photo-Real Talking Head via Trajectory-Guided Sample Selection, in INTERSPEECH 2010, International Speech Communication Association, 22 September 2010
Lijuan Wang, Shenghao Qin, and Frank Soong, Auto-Checking Speech Transcriptions by Multiple Template Constrained, in INTERSPEECH 2009, International Speech Communication Association, September 2009
Lijuan Wang, Xiaojun Qian, Lei Ma, and Frank Soong, A Real-Time Text to Audio-Visual Speech Synthesis System, in INTERSPEECH2008, International Speech Communication Association, 15 September 2008
Lijuan Wang, Tao Hu, Peng Liu, and Frank Soong, Efficient Handwriting Correction of Speech Recognition Errors with Template Constrained Posterior (TCP), in INTERSPEECH 2008, International Speech Communication Association, September 2008
Lijuan Wang, Tao Hu, and Frank Soong, Template Constrained Posterior for Verifying Phone Transcriptions, in ICASSP 2008, IEEE, April 2008
Hua Zhang, Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, and Wenju Liu, Context Constrained-Generalized Posterior Probability for Verifying Phone Transcriptions, September 2007
Yong Zhao, Di Peng, Lijuan Wang, Min Chu, Yining Chen, Peng Yu, and Jun Guo, Constructing Stylistic Synthesis Databases from Audio Books, in INTERSPEECH 2006, International Speech Communication Association, September 2006
Lijuan Wang, Yong Zhao, Min Chu, Frank Soong, Jianlai Zhou, and Zhigang Cao, Context-dependent boundary modeling for automatic segmentation of TTS units, in IEICE transaction on information and systems, 2006
Lijuan Wang, Yong Zhao, Min Chu, and Frank Soong, Phonetic Transcription Verification with Generalized Posterior Probability, in INTERSPEECH 2005, International Speech Communication Association, September 2005
Yong Zhao, Lijuan Wang, Min Chu, Frank Soong, and Zhigang Cao, Refining Phoneme Segmentations Using Speaker-Adaptive Context Dependent Boundary Models, in INTERSPEECH 2005, International Speech Communication Association, September 2005
LiJuan Wang, Yong Zhao, Min Chu, Frank K. Soong, and Zhigang Cao, Phonetic Transcription Verification with Generalized Posterior Probability, ACL/SIGPARSE, April 2005
LiJuan Wang, Yong Zhao, Min Chu, Jianlai Zhou, and Zhigang Cao, Refining Segmental Boundaries for TTS database Using Fine Contextual-Dependent Boundary Models, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., May 2004

Patents (9 US patents filed)

Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, “Photo-Realistic Synthesis Of Image Sequences With Lip Movements Synchronized With Speech,” MS# 332363.01 filed on 5/2/2011
Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, Qiang Huo, Zhengyou Zhang, “Photo-Realistic Synthesis Of Three Dimensional Animation With Facial Features Synchronized With Speech,” MS# 332364.01 filed on 5/3/2011
Weijiang Xu, Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, Matt Scott, Hao Wei, Gang Chen, “Talking Teacher Visualization For Language Learning,” MS# 331795.01 filed on 4/29/2011
Ning Xu, Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, Qi Luo, Xiao Liang, Xin Zou, “Real-Time Animation For An Expressive Avatar,” MS# 330686.01 filed on 11/19/2010
Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, “Minimum Converted Trajectory Error (MCTE) Audio-To-Video Engine,” MS# 330541.01 filed on 11/4/2010
Lijuan Wang, Lei Ma, Frank Soong, "Speech and Text Driven HMM-Based Body Animation Synthesis", US Patent, MS#323429.01 filed on 9/30/2008
Lijuan Wang and Frank Soong, “Handwriting-based user interface for efficient correction of speech recognition errors”, US Patent, MS#322503.01 filed on 3/28/2008
Lijuan Wang, Frank Soong, “Template Constrained Generalized Posterior Probability”, US Patent, MS#320667.01 filed on 10/10/2007
Yong Zhao, Frank Soong, Min Chu, Lijuan Wang, “Iterative Unit Selection For Speech Synthesis”, US Patent, MS#321400.01 filed on 8/25/2007