Mihaela Calacean

Experience

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  East-West Service HB

  Jun 2005 - Aug 2005

  Translator

  ♦ Translated technical material from English to Romanian.

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  Verified AB

  Mar 2006 - May 2006

  Linguistic Consultant

  ♦ Performed several direct linguistic analysis.

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  STTS Stockholm

  May 2006 - Sept 2006

  Project Coordinator

  ♦ Responsible for developing several lexicons containing phonetic transcriptions together with syntactical and semantical annotations for French:♦ Defining pronunciation transcription rules and the set of syntactic and semantical tags♦ Categorizing and correcting systematic errors in the transcriptions and the syntactic and semantical tags♦ Expanding the lexicons for important words♦ Improving the performance of the rule-based grapheme-to-phoneme module for French♦ Performing validation controls and assisting with writing the validation rules for automatically entering new words into the lexicon Show less

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  IBM

  Jun 2007 - Dec 2007

  Intern - 6-month internship as part of master’s degree

  ♦ Contributed to the development of a Swedish Text-to-Speech (TTS) system.♦ Improved the performance of the Swedish Grapheme-to-Morpheme system from 65% effective to 85% effective.♦ Assisted with the evaluation of TTS casting speakers for Swedish and other languages.♦ Customized speaker recordings, improving pronunciation, and tested and tuned the TTS voice for Swedish.

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  SDL International

  Oct 2008 - Jan 2012

  Support Engineer

  ♦ Successfully managed key accounts, reducing incident levels on major accounts from 50 incidents per month to 5.♦ Increased level 2 clear-up rates for incidents to 90%, significantly reducing the number of escalations to higher levels required.♦ Improved the monitoring of issues after escalation and the improved liaison between all involved parties.♦ Led an initiative to record more incident resolutions in the Knowledge Base database.♦ Promoted to level 2 support in August 2009 after only 10 months due to major contribution made to reducing resolution times and improving procedures.♦ Rolled out virtual machines with relevant software to replicate customer issues and avoid the need for additional technical involvement. Show less

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  Telelingua International

  Sept 2011 - Nov 2012

  Project Manager

  ♦ Successfully managed key account COVANCE for sponsors such as OTSUKA, Index Pharmaceuticals, InterMune, Corthera, Sanofi and others♦ Improved terminology consistency for translations into English mainly for South Korea and Latin America by reusing Translation Memory resources for editable submission/approval letters♦ Created a searchable structured database of previously translated documents for Korea and Latin America♦ Improved terminology consistency in translations performed without traditional Computer Aided Translation tools by creating internal glossaries based on the customers’ validations♦ Diversified the internal process for review to and from main account by introducing new technology into the workflow such as SDLXLIFF Converter for MS Word for the SDLXLIFF format and other newer pieces of technology♦ Provided internal training and back office support for new Computer Aided Tools (CAT) technology♦ Worked with documents in over 60 languages Show less

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  Nuance Communications

  Nov 2012 - Sept 2019

  Activities and responsibilities:♦ Voice Building and tuning of voices using deep learning techniques based on neural net models♦ Assessing the impact of changes of development parameters♦ Full-chain back-end development of successful new custom and Text-to-Speech (TTS) voices portfolio, assisted with voice refreshes, evaluation and testing, support and maintenance♦ Cross department interaction - Input for creating voice and language specific resources♦ Reduced customer complaints by 90% for German voice for Audi cars♦ Organized interviews and tests for data validation Team Selection, selected and hired successful candidate♦ Worked on language-specific corrections to the data, verification of corrections of external contractors♦ Coordinated data validation efforts♦ Trained and coached new colleagues, temporary reports and external contractors, provided continuous feedback for on performance on tasks♦ Written and presented documentation of voice building workflow♦ Presented results of internal research projects♦ Redesigned final product QA by adding an end-of-line testing step of release products across generic and specific domains with the purpose of identifying showstoppers, bug logging for subsequent releases and continuous improvement♦ Organized Voice Talent selection for new voices, internal and external surveys with native participants♦ Assisted with negotiation of prices, buy-out and exclusivity rights♦ Maintenance and support - analyzed and identified root cause of bug, fix, test and release voice updates Show less

  • Senior Voice Manager

    Aug 2016 - Sept 2019

  • Speech Output Designer

    Nov 2012 - Aug 2016
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  Cerence Inc.

  Sept 2019 - Oct 2020

  Senior Voice Manager

  Selected achievements:♦ Developed world-renowned American English synthetic voice for top sold smartphone brand♦ Fully responsible for development of German synthetic voice for Audi cars – resulted in very high overall product quality improvement: 0.4 points measured on a 5-points scale Mean Opinion Score (MOS) test♦ Optimized new neural net solutions and deployed them for portfolio of tier-1 languages. ♦ Created new approach for developing multilingual voices which improved quality of speech output of multilingual content by 40% ♦ Developed innovative way of data cleaning which improved data validation by 30% ♦ Efficiently trained and educated internal and external partners on every step of voice development process♦ Identified redundant data for removal and introduced new data to improve the richness of the data♦ Employee of the Quarter Award in 2018 Q2 Show less

• 

  European Commission

  Oct 2020 - now

  Project Officer - Project Manager for Speech Recognition and its Applications

  ♦ Custom Speech Solutions: Developed and maintained speech recognition models tailored to specificdomains and VIP needs, leveraging Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services.♦ Data-Driven Innovation: Led the creation of a human-validated speech recognition corpus from DG SCIC conferences, advancing internal speech technology.♦ Enhanced Remote Collaboration: Evaluated and implemented live transcriptions in the multilingualparticipation platform, fostering seamless remote meetings.♦ Multilingual Speech Recognition: Coordinated efforts with DGT and DIGIT to validate audio data in 24European languages for in-house speech recognition solutions.♦ Benchmarking: Established a benchmarking dataset to evaluate speech recognition solutions for theDigital Europe Programme, ensuring best-in-class technology selection.♦ GDPR: Acted as the data controller for speech technology data, adhering to strict data protectionregulations.♦ Procurement Expertise: Played a key role in the evaluation of Language Technology Solutions alongside DG CONNECT and DG TAXUD.♦ Improving eLearning Solutions: Piloted a text-to-speech solution for e-learning content, benefiting sister DGs like DG TAXUD, HR, and JRC.♦ Project Management: Successfully managed multi-stakeholder projects, including the development and deployment of speech-to-text live transcription and text-to-speech e-learning portals. Defined technical and functional architectures, oversaw external contractor development, and implemented testing & Commission-wide rollouts. Show less