Hello and welcome to my web page!

I was awarded a Ph.D. for my research in the Telecommunications Engineering Department within the Research School of Information Sciences and Engineering (RSISE) at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia.

After having worked as Research Engineer on the Audio Tracking Project with National ICT Australia Ltd (NICTA) for a few months, I held a post-doctoral position for three years with the Western Australian Telecommunications Research Institute (WATRI) in Perth, Australia (within the Faculty of Engineering and Computing, Curtin University of Technology, Perth). As part of my work at WATRI, I was involved in the LaMP research project carried out in collaboration with, and partly funded by NICTA.

I am now working as a Research Scientist for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), within the division of Mathematical and Information Sciences in Floreat Park, Western Australia.

This simple web page aims to provide some basic information about who I am and what I do. Please feel free to contact me directly if you would like more specific information about me or my work. Thanks for visiting and enjoy...

The contact details provided below correspond to my current position with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), within the division of Mathematical and Information Sciences in Floreat Park, Western Australia.

Office:
CSIRO Mathematical & Information Sciences
Leeuwin Centre
65 Brockway Road
Floreat WA 6014
Australia

Mailing address:
CSIRO Mathematical & Information Sciences
Private Bag 5
Wembley WA 6913
Australia

Phone: +61 (0)8 9333 6123
Mobile: +61 (0)4 2344 3864
Fax: +61 (0)8 9333 6121
E-mail:
Web: http://www.eric-lehmann.com

I was born in Porrentruy, Jura, Switzerland, and spent the first 20 to 25 years of my life around that place doing all sorts of stuff.

Then in 1999, after finishing my undergraduate studies at the ETHZ in Zurich, I challenged myself to go and study overseas for a while. That turned out to work pretty well as I spent about 5 years at the ANU in Canberra, followed by a 3 year postdoc with WATRI in Perth, Australia, and I am now holding a permanent position of Research Scientist with CSIRO, also in Western Australia. On March 23, 2009, I also officially became a citizen of Australia.

The best way to describe myself is probably as a chronic perfectionist who enjoys cooking, playing pool (billiards), swimming, horse riding, and playing guitar and didgeridoo, among lots of other things. One way or another, I also grew up to become a fanatical addict of LaTeX, Linux, and the Calvin & Hobbes comic strips.

Short bio:  if you prefer something more formal...

Eric Lehmann graduated in 1999 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Switzerland, with a Diploma in Electrical Engineering (Master equivalent). He received the M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees, both in Electrical Engineering, from the Australian National University (Canberra) in 2000 and 2004 respectively.
Between 2004 and 2008, he held various research positions with National ICT Australia (NICTA) in Canberra, ACT, as well as the Western Australian Telecommunications Research Institute (WATRI) in Perth, WA. He is now working as a Research Scientist for the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Perth, within the division of Mathematical and Information Sciences.
His current scientific interests include various aspects of signal processing (including acoustics, speech, array and image processing), as well as Bayesian estimation and tracking (with particular emphasis on the application of sequential Monte Carlo methods, i.e., particle filters).

Curriculum:  here are links to my Curriculum Vitæ (version March 2009): full-blown version (77kB) or condensed form (66kB). Or simply see below for online information...

My Ph.D. research project focused on the study of sequential Monte Carlo methods as a new tool for carrying out various signal processing tasks. More specifically, I was working on the problem of acoustic source localisation and tracking in reverberant environments, using array signal processing principles. In this specific case, particle filters offer an efficient way of dealing with the complex problem of reverberation. The project involved primarily the development and test of several particle filter algorithms using recordings of real audio data.

As a major result of this research, a particle filter using the principle of importance sampling was designed and successfully tested. This algorithm allows the automatic detection of new speakers entering the acoustic scene and also automatically recovers following the occurrence a track loss (for instance as a result of a pause in the speech signal). This specific particle filter was also implemented in real-time on a standard Linux-based desktop computer and tested in a typical office room equipped with a 16 sensor array. Some tracking examples from this algorithm have been recorded (originally running in real-time) and can be found for demonstration purposes here.

This project was undertaken under the supervision of Prof. Robert Williamson, ANU, Canberra (also scientific director with National ICT Australia). Part of this research was also done in joint collaboration with Dr. Darren Ward, Imperial College, London.

My Ph.D. led me to focus principally on Bayesian estimation and Sequential Monte Carlo methods, acoustic source localisation and tracking, and array signal processing. More generally however, my main research interests also include (in random order):

• acoustics
• digital signal processing
• speech processing and enhancement
• algorithms for real-time audio processing
• multimedia information processing and human-machine interaction

I also highly enjoy any kind of software programming and GUI development in general (Assembler, Matlab, C, etc.).

Theses

Conference and workshop papers (peer-reviewed)

Non-refereed conference/workshop papers

Technical reports (internally reviewed)