Development Quality

Sandra Ferrari Disner

Assistant Professor, University of Southern California

USC Department of Linguistics 310-***-****

**** **** ***, *** *** abqnis@r.postjobfree.com

Los Angeles, California 90089-1693 www.sandradisner.com

Education:

University of California, Los Angeles, M.A. (1978), Ph.D. (1983) in Linguistics.

Wellesley College, B.A. (1972). Phi Beta Kappa.

Language Proficiency:

English, Italian, Spanish (Native speaker fluency)

French, German (Near-native speaker fluency)

Academic Employment:

Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California:

Instructor, Linguistic Interpretation of the Law (Ling 412) 2012

Instructor, New Horizons in Speaker Identification (Ling 450) 2011-12

Instructor, GE course Language and Mind (Ling 275) 2007, 2009-11

Instructor, Introduction to Linguistics (Ling 210) 2010-12

Instructor, Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (Ling 301) 2010-12

Instructor, Forensic Linguistics (Ling 499) 2010

Instructor, Graduate Seminar on Speaker Identification (Ling 632) 2006

Instructor, Introduction to Phonetics (Ling 580) 2006

Department of General Education, University of Southern California:

Instructor, Leaving Our Own Imprint (ARLT 100g) 2011

Lecturer and section leader, America, the Frontier & the New West (AMST 301) 2009

Lecturer and section leader, Short Stories and One-Act Plays (ARLT 101) 2008-09

Lecturer and section leader, L.A.: The Fiction (ARLT 101) 2008-09

Department of Linguistics, UCLA

Instructor, Introduction to Phonology (Ling 120) 2008

Instructor, Introduction to Phonetics (Ling 103) 2006

Department of Comparative Literature & Foreign Languages, UC Riverside

Instructor, Introduction to Phonetics (Ling 111) 1981

Research Position:

Visiting Scholar, Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ 1979-80

Invited Lectureships:

Invited Lecturer, UCLA, Voice and Its Perception (Communication Studies 197) 2007

Invited Lecturer, California State Univ., Northridge, Cognitive Linguistics (Ling 503) 1996

Invited Speaker, Annual Linguistic Forum, University of Pisa, Italy 1987

Forensic Consulting:

Expert Witness in Forensic Linguistics 1983-present

Representative Books, Articles, and Conference Presentations:

P. Ladefoged and S. Disner (2012). Vowels and Consonants (3rd edition).

Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

S. Disner (2012). Phonetic complements to linguistic evidence. Paper presented

at the 5th West Coast Roundtable on Language and Law, Vancouver, Canada.

S. Fulop and S. Disner (2011). Examining the voice bar. Acoustical Society of

America, Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Vol. 14, pp. 060002.

S. Disner and S. Fulop (2011). Individuating vocal characteristics with the reassigned

spectrogram. Paper presented at the 10th Biennial Conference, International

Association of Forensic Linguists, Birmingham, England.

S. Disner, S. Fulop and F.-Y. Hsieh (2010). The fine structure of phonation as a biometric.

Paper presented at the 2nd Pan American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics, Cancun, Mexico.

S. Fulop and S. Disner (2009). Advanced time-frequency displays applied to forensic speaker

identification. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 6, Acoustical Society of America.

S. Fulop and S. Disner (2007). Using the reassigned spectrogram for voice identification.

Paper presented at the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Saarbr cken,

Germany.

S. Disner (2007). A new tool for speaker identification. Paper presented at the 8th Biennial

Conference, International Association of Forensic Linguists, Seattle, WA.

S. Disner (2004). Panel discussion, Everything you always wanted to know about voices, but

were afraid to ask. SpeechTEK, New York, NY.

S. Disner (1986). On describing vowel quality. In J.J. Ohala & J. J. Jaeger, Experimental

Phonology. Orlando: Academic Press.

S. Disner (1985). Insights on vowel spacing: results of a language survey. In Ian Maddieson,

Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

S. Disner (1983). Vowel quality: the relation between universal and language-specific factors.

UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 58:1-158.

S. Disner (1982). Stress evaluation and voice lie detection: a review. UCLA Working Papers in

Phonetics 54:78-92.

R. A. Harshman, M. E. Lundy, and S. Disner (1980). Intelligent (statistically-guided)

algorithms for vowel normalization. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 68:S32.

S. Disner (1980). Evaluation of vowel normalization procedures. Journal of the Acoustical

Society of America, 67:253-261.

S. Disner (1979). Panel discussion, Voice stress analysis. Acoustical Society of America, Salt

Lake City, UT.

S. Disner (1978). Normalization across languages. Journal of the Acoustical Society of

America, 64:S21.

S. Disner (1978) Vowels in Germanic Languages. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics

40:1-79.

S. Disner (1977). Cross-linguistic survey of vowel quality. Journal of the Acoustical Society

of America, 62:S49.

P. Ladefoged, A. Cochrane, and S. Disner (1977). Laterals and trills. Journal of the

International Phonetic Association, 7:46-54.

[Note: Between 1988 and 2001 I was working for firms whose corporate policy made it

impossible to publish information about ongoing research.]

Employment in Speech Technology:

Consultant on speech synthesis, NeoSpeech, Inc., Fremont CA 2003-2005

Provided ongoing linguistic support to the engineering staff in the development

of a text-to-speech conversion system for English.

Consultant on speech recognition, Breveon, Inc., Sunnyvale CA 1999-2001

Provided ongoing linguistic support to the engineering staff in the development

of a speech-recognition system for medical reports in English.

Consultant on phonetics of the lexicon, The Software Toolworks, Los Angeles, CA 1991

Provided overall pronunciation guidelines and specific local pronunciations of

toponyms and geographical terms for an interactive US atlas.

Consultant on speech synthesis, Centigram, Inc., San Jose CA 1988-97

Provided ongoing linguistic support to the engineering staff in the development

of a text-to-speech conversion system for English, French, Spanish, Italian,

and German.

Designed all the preprocessors and custom dictionaries, and obtained a US patent

(#5,634,084 Abbreviation and Acronym/Initialism Expansion Procedures for a

Text-to-Speech System, with B. Malsheen and G. Groner) on this software.

Tested and debugged all products.

Participated in trade shows, client meetings, and strategic planning sessions.

Member, Technical Staff, Mattel Electronics, Hawthorne CA 1981-83

Served as senior linguist in the development of Mattel's Intellivision, the

world's first talking video games.

Participated in script development; also translated scripts into French, Spanish,

Italian, and German. Convened panels of native speakers for colloquial usage.

Conducted recording sessions in the US and abroad.

Oversaw the editing and compression of the speech signal.

Tested for clarity and intelligibility; implemented debugging techniques.

Served as liaison between Mattel Electronics (US) and Mattel s overseas divisions.

Employment in Government:

U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C. 1973-75

Translator in Spanish, French, Italian, German.

Interpreter in Italian.

Grants:

Research grant from the USC Fund for Innovative Undergraduate Teaching, to develop

protocols and teaching materials for forensic linguistics 2009

Faculty development grants from USC College to attend conferences in

Birmingham, England and Vancouver, Canada 2011 and 2012

Professional Organizations:

Member, Acoustical Society of America

Member, International Phonetic Association

Member, International Association of Forensic Linguists

Member, Association of Laboratory Phonology

Representative Legal Cases:

Trademark litigation between Sylmark Holdings and Walgreens, Inc.

Arlyn Alonzo, Esq., and Keith Fraser, Esq., Connolly, Bove, Lodge & Hutz (April 2008).

Trademark litigation between Hasbro, Inc. and MGA Entertainment, Inc.

Kent Raygor, Esq., Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton (August 2006).

Trademark litigation between Ugg Holdings, Inc. and Koolaburra et al.

Carlo Van den Bosch, Esq., Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton (February 2005).

Trademark litigation between Innovative Beverage Concepts, Inc. and Ames

International, Inc. Alan Kindred, Esq., Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Younger (June

2004).

Trademark litigation between Ameriquest Mortgage Company and Americrest Bank.

Mitchell N. Reinis, Esq., and Jason H. Fisher, Esq., Buchalter, Nemer, Fields & Younger

(November 2003).

Trademark litigation between Bandolino Shoes and Bando Fashions.

Joseph Golant, Esq., and Jim Stewart, Esq., Morgan, Lewis & Bockius (February 1992).

Voice identification in a rape case, People v. Smith; consideration of vocal disguise.

Craig Silverman, Esq., Office of the District Attorney, Denver, Colorado (May 1991).

Voice comparison between bomb threats and voice of plaintiff in a false-prosecution case,

Henderson v. Cedars-Sinai Hospital. Linda Miller, Esq., Law Offices of Rushfeldt,

Shelley & McCurdy (January 1988).

Voice comparison between bomb threats to Pan American Airlines and voice of defendant,

People v. Prinzivalli. Ronald A. Ziff, Esq. (March 1984).

Voice comparison between a tape recording and known exemplars of the voice of L. Ron

Hubbard, thought to be missing or deceased. Mr. Robert Levin (January 1984).

Voice comparison between tape recording (provided by Larry Flynt) and known exemplars of

the voice of John Z. DeLorean. ABC Television News (October 1983).

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