IEEE Awards Booklet - 2009 - 4

I E E E

C O R P O R AT E

I E E E

R E C O G N I T I O N

S E R V I C E

AWA R D

2009 IEEE
Corporate Innovation Recognition

2009 IEEE
Haraden Pratt Award

Sponsored by IEEE Foundation

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

James H. Beall

For long-term commitment to pioneering research,
innovative development, and commercialization of
speech recognition

For a lifetime of continued leadership and service to
IEEE at all levels

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center's pioneering techniques and
continued innovations over the last 35 years have made speech
recognition applications an indispensable part of everyday life.
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center was established in 1961 and
has its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York. Its
research ranges from exploratory work in the physical sciences
to semiconductors and systems technology to software for
security, programming, mathematics, and speech technologies.

James H. Beall, an IEEE Life Fellow, has demonstrated unparalleled leadership to IEEE for over 40 years. With contributions at
the Institute Region, Society levels, committee work and section
activities, in particular the Florida West Coast Section, Beall is
known for his pride in IEEE and an ability to elevate his colleagues to a higher level of performance while striving to adhere
to the ideals of IEEE.
Mr. Beall served on the IEEE Standards Board for seven years
and as director of Standards Activities in 1983-84. While on the
Standards Board he coordinated the development and revisions
to IEEE standards as well as reviewed IEEE standards projects
for due process.

IBM commercialized the technology in the 1990s with its Simply
Speaking and ViaVoice products, allowing PC-based dictation
enabling users to create documents without typing. In 2003 IBM
introduced an embedded version of ViaVoice providing fully integrated automatic speech recognition to enable interaction for
small mobile devices such as voice-directed applications in automobiles. In early 2000s IBM delivered Websphere Voice Server,
a telephony version of its speech recognition technology, for call
center interaction applications such as directory assistance.
IBM's worldwide R&D labs have ported these products to a
variety of languages and domains.

Mr. Beall has served on the Technical Activities Board, the
Regional Activities Board and the USA Board. He has chaired
many committees within the IEEE Industry Applications Society,
serving as the Society's president in 1980 and on its Executive
Board for 12 years. He was Director of Division II in 1985-86 and
Region 3 Director in 1996-97. Mr. Beall also served on the
Chicago Section Executive Committee and was chair of its
Northwest Subsection. His contributions to IEEE conferences
include Centennial Committee Chair of the 1984 Industry
Applications Society Conference and organizer of the IEEE
Power Engineering Society 1998 Winter Power Meeting.

IBM has also combined speech technologies with other technologies in innovative fashions. IBM's speech translation
applications are used by the U.S. military to more easily communicate with the native population using portable computers.
IBM has augmented speech recognition with video information
that captures lip movements to enhance recognition performance in noisy environments. IBM continues to advance the
speech recognition area by developing promising research directions such as discriminative training concepts, statistical
language model estimation and discriminative feature extraction to improve overall performance.

In all of his IEEE positions, he has provided technical leadership.
Mr. Beall retired from AT&T Teletype Corp. in 1984 and is
currently an engineering consultant in New Port Richey, Florida
and remains an active member of the Florida West Coast Section,
Florida council and Region 3.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Awards Booklet - 2009