Research Interests

I am interested in many areas of signal processing for speech, audio and acoustics. My doctoral studies took me in the direction of speech modelling with particular reference to using the fundamental glottal period for speech analysis. As a postdoctoral researcher working in the EU FP7 SCENIC project I moved towards multichannel acoustic signal processing for environment-aware audio systems. I have a continuing interest in:

Spatial audio capture and reproduction
Fourier acoustics
Beamforming
Acoustic echo cancellation
Blind and supervised channel identification
Dereverberation
Channel equalization
Voice source modelling

Background

Education

PhD in Speech Processing, Communications and Signal Processing Research Group, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College London, UK, 2010. Thesis, "Glottal-Synchronous Speech Processing".
MEng in Electical and Electronic Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College London, UK, 2006. Thesis, "A Novel Loudspeaker Equalizer".

Career

Postdoctoral Researcher, Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA, Oct. 2011-present.
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Communications and Signal Processing Research Group, Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department, Imperial College London, UK, Feb 2010-Oct 2011.
Vacation Trainee, BBC Research and Development, Tadworth, Surrey, UK. Sep. 2001-Sep. 2006.

Professional Activities

Peer review of most signal processing conferences and journals.
Member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society since 2006.

Social Activities

Playing the piano and guitar
Automotive repair (welding, machining, sheet metalwork, refinishing).
Precision engineering with metals and plastics
Photography

Publications

2012

Jens Ahrens, Mark R.P. Thomas, and Ivan Tashev, HRTF Magnitude Modeling Using a Non-Regularized Least-Squares Fit of Spherical Harmonics Coefficients on Incomplete Data, in APSIPA Annual Summit and Conference, Hollywood, CA, USA, 4 December 2012
Mark R. P. Thomas, Jens Ahrens, and Ivan Tashev, Beamformer Design Using Measured Microphone Directivity Patterns: Robustness to Modelling Error, in APSIPA Annual Summit and Conference, Hollywood, CA, USA, December 2012
Mark R. P. Thomas, Jens Ahrens, and Ivan Tashev, Optimal 3D Beamforming Using Measured Microphone Directivity Patterns, Proc. Intl. Workshop Acoust. Signal Enhancement (IWAENC), Aachen, Germany, 4 September 2012
D. P. Jarrett, E. A. P. Habets, M. R. P. Thomas, and P. A. Naylor, Rigid sphere room impulse response simulation: Algorithm and applications, in J. Acoust. Soc. Am., vol. 132, no. 3, pp. 1462-1472, Acoustical Society of America, September 2012
M. R. P. Thomas, N. D. Gaubitch, E. A. P. Habets, and P. A. Naylor, An Insight into Common Filtering in Noisy SIMO Blind System Identification, International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Kyoto, Japan, March 2012
T. Drugman, M. R. P. Thomas, J. Gudnason, T. Dutoit, and P. A. Naylor, Detection of Glottal Closing Instants from Voiced Speech: A Quantitative Review, in IEEE Trans. Audio, Speech, Lang. Process., vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 994–1006, March 2012
F. Antonacci, J. Filos, M. R. P. Thomas, E. A. P. Habets, A. Sarti, P. A. Naylor, and S. Tubaro, Inference of Room Geometry from Acoustic Impulse Responses, in IEEE Trans. Audio, Speech, Lang. Process., 2012
M. R. P. Thomas, J. Gudnason, and P. A. Naylor, Estimation of Glottal Closing and Opening Instants in Voiced Speech using the YAGA Algorithm, in IEEE Trans. Audio, Speech, Lang. Process., vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 82–91, January 2012

2011

A. Canclini, F. Antonacci, M. R. P. Thomas, J. Filos, A. Sarti, P. A. Naylor, and S. Tubaro, Exact Localization of Acoustic Reflectors from Quadratic Constraints, in Proc. IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, New Paltz, New York, October 2011
P. Annibale, F. Antonacci, P. Bestagini, A. Brutti, A. Canclini, L. Cristoforetti, E. A. P. Habets, J. Filos, W. Kellermann, K. Kowalczyk, A. Lombard, E. Mabande, D. Markovic, P. A. Naylor, M. Omologo, R. Rabenstein, A. Sarti, P. Svaizer, and M. R. P. Thomas, The SCENIC Project: Space-Time Audio Processing for Environment-Aware Acoustic Sensing and Rendering, in Proc. Audio Eng. Soc. Conventions, New York, October 2011
M. R. P. Thomas, N. D. Gaubitch, and P. A. Naylor, Application of Channel Shortening to Acoustic Channel Equalization in the Presence of Noise and Estimation Error, in Proc. IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, New Paltz, New York, USA, October 2011
J. Filos, A. Canclini, M. R. P. Thomas, F. Antonacci, A. Sarti, and P. A. Naylor, Robust Inference of Room Geometry from Acoustic Impulse Responses, in Proc. European Signal Processing Conf. (EUSIPCO), Barcelona, Spain, August 2011
D. P. Jarrett, E. A. P. Habets, M. R. P. Thomas, N. D. Gaubitch, and P. A. Naylor, Dereverberation Performance of Rigid and Open Spherical Microphone Arrays: Theory & Simulation, in Proc. Joint Workshop on Hands-Free Speech Communication and Microphone Arrays (HSCMA), Edinburgh, UK, June 2011
D. P. Jarrett, E. A. P. Habets, M. R. P. Thomas, and P. A. Naylor, Simulating Room Impulse Responses for Spherical Microphone Arrays, in Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 2011
J. Gudnason, M. R. P. Thomas, D. P. W. Ellis, and P. A. Naylor, Data-Driven Voice Source Waveform Analysis and Synthesis, in Speech Communication, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 199–211, February 2011

2010

M. R. P. Thomas, N. D. Gaubitch, E. A. P. Habets, and P. A. Naylor, Supervised Identification and Removal of Common Filter Components in Adaptive Blind SIMO System Identification, in Proc. Intl. Workshop Acoust. Echo Noise Control (IWAENC), Tel Aviv, Israel, August 2010
M. R. P. Thomas, Glottal-Synchronous Speech Processing, PhD Thesis, Imperial College London, May 2010
M. R. P. Thomas, B. Geiser, J. Gudnason, P. A. Naylor, and P. Vary, Voice Source Estimation for Artificial Bandwidth Extension of Telephone Speech, in Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Dallas, TX, USA, March 2010
N. D. Gaubitch, M. R. P. Thomas, and P. A. Naylor, Dereverberation using LPC-based Approaches, in Speech Dereverberation, pp. 99–132, Springer, 2010

2009

M. R. P. Thomas and P. A. Naylor, The SIGMA Algorithm: A Glottal Activity Detector for Electroglottographic Signals, in IEEE Trans. Audio, Speech, Lang. Process., vol. 17, no. 8, pp. 1557–1566, November 2009
Jon Gudnason, Mark R. P. Thomas, Patrick A. Naylor, and Dan P. W. Ellis, Voice Source Waveform Analysis and Synthesis using Principal Component Analysis and Gaussian Mixture Modelling, in Proc. Interspeech Conf., Brighton, UK, September 2009
M. R. P. Thomas, J. Gudnason, and P. A. Naylor, Detection of Glottal Closing and Opening Instants Using the Improved DYPSA Framework, in Proc. European Signal Processing Conf. (EUSIPCO), Glasgow, Scotland, August 2009
M. R. P. Thomas, J. Gudnason, and P. A. Naylor, Data-Driven Voice Source Waveform Modelling, in Proc. IEEE Intl. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Taipei, Taiwan, April 2009

2008

M. R. P. Thomas and P. A. Naylor, The SIGMA Algorithm for Estimation of Reference-Quality Glottal Closure Instants from Electroglottograph Signals, in Proc. European Signal Processing Conf. (EUSIPCO), Lausanne, Switzerland, August 2008
M. R. P. Thomas, J. Gudnason, and P. A. Naylor, Application of the DYPSA Algorithm to Segmented Time-Scale Modification of Speech, in Proc. European Signal Processing Conf. (EUSIPCO), Lausanne, Switzerland, August 2008

2007

N. D. Gaubitch, M. R. P. Thomas, and P. A. Naylor, Subband Method for Multichannel Least Squares Equalization of Room Transfer Functions, in Proc. IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, New Paltz, New York, October 2007
M. R. P. Thomas, N. D. Gaubitch, J. Gudnason, and P. A. Naylor, A Practical Multichannel Dereverberation Algorithm Using Multichannel DYPSA and Spatiotemporal Averaging, in Proc. IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics, New Paltz, NY, October 2007
M. R. P. Thomas, N. D. Gaubitch, and P. A. Naylor, Multichannel DYPSA for estimation of glottal closure instants in reverberant speech, in Proc. European Signal Processing Conf. (EUSIPCO), Poznan, Poland, September 2007

2006

M. R. P. Thomas, A Novel Loudspeaker Equalizer, Master's Thesis, Imperial College London, May 2006

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