--- title: "George Saon — author profile and papers — Elamur Research" description: "George Saon, IBM: 7 papers on Elamur Research (2015–2021), h-index 38 — affiliations, topics, co-authors and who cites them in our library." canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-saon/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-saon/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [authors](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/) / George Saon # George Saon George Saon has 7 papers in our library, in 2015–2021, most of them on [Speech & spoken language](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/speech/), [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/), [Dialogue systems](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/); often with [Michael Picheny](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/michael-picheny/), [Bhuvana Ramabhadran](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/bhuvana-ramabhadran/), [Brian Kingsbury](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/brian-kingsbury/). 7 papers in our library · 2015–2021 [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/A5079994647) · [ORCID](https://orcid.org/0009-0004-6837-5009) · [**h-index 38**](https://openalex.org/authors/A5079994647) · [200 works](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5079994647) · [5,816 citations](https://openalex.org/works?filter=author.id:A5079994647&sort=cited_by_count:desc) OpenAlex, 2026-10-14 [📄 7 works in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-saon/#papers) · [🔗 Cited 70 times in our library](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-saon/cited-by/) · [⭐ Paper Stars ranking: #2616](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/paper-stars/page/27/#star-2616) The profile is the library's match of the name; two people with one name are not always told apart. Elsewhere: [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=search_authors&mauthors=George+Saon) · [Semantic Scholar](https://www.semanticscholar.org/search?q=George+Saon) · [dblp](https://dblp.org/search?q=George+Saon) · [ACL Anthology](https://aclanthology.org/search/?q=George+Saon) ## Affiliations [🏢**IBM** Armonk · United States 2000–2026 · 93 papers*current*](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/companies/ibm/) · [🔬**IBM Research - Thomas J. Watson Research Center** Yorktown Heights · United States 2000–2025 · 71 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/ibm-research-thomas-j-watson-research-center/) · [🔬**Laboratoire Lorrain de Recherche en Informatique et ses Applications** Nancy · France 1997–2002 · 6 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/laboratoire-lorrain-de-recherche-en-informatique-et-ses-applications/) · [🔬**Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique** Paris · France 1997–2002 · 4 papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/labs/centre-national-de-la-recherche-scientifique/) · [🤝**READ Global** San Francisco · United States 1994–1998 · 2 papers](https://ror.org/02arxvh93) 🏛️**IBM** Yorktown Heights · [United States](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/countries/united-states/) 1998Employment since 1998 · Distinguished Research Scientist, Research From the bylines of their papers (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14), ORCID and Wikidata; institutions on papers are matched by machine. 4 more institutions on single bylines are not listed. ## Concepts, shelves and topics Of its works in our library: the number of works on each and its rating among them. 📚 Shelves 5 The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).[Arts and Humanities · 7 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · [Computer Science · 7 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/) · [Artificial Intelligence · 7 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/artificial-intelligence/) · [Language and Linguistics · 7 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · [Signal Processing · 7 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/computer-science/signal-processing/) 🧭 Topics 3 Research subjects and languages the work is about.[English · 7 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · [Speech & spoken language · 7 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/speech/) · [Dialogue systems · 6 works](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/dialogue-systems/) ## Works by year ### 2020s [**2021** 1 paper On the limit of English conversational speech recognition](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tuske-2021-limit-english-conversational-speech-recognition/) ### 2010s [**2019** 1 paper English Broadcast News Speech Recognition by Humans and Machines](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/thomas-2019-english-broadcast-news-speech-recognition/) · [**2017** 3 papers George Saon's papers of 2017](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-saon/year/2017/) · [**2016** 1 paper The IBM 2016 English Conversational Telephone Speech Recognition System](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/saon-2016-ibm-2016-english-conversational-telephone/) · [**2015** 1 paper The IBM 2015 English Conversational Telephone Speech Recognition System](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/saon-2015-ibm-2015-english-conversational-telephone/) ## Papers The most cited first (OpenAlex and our library). 1. **[English Conversational Telephone Speech Recognition by Humans and Machines](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/saon-2017-english-conversational-telephone-speech-recognition/)** *(2017 · 382 citations)* The paper tests the claim that machines reached human-level accuracy on conversational telephone speech. It also reports a stronger IBM recognizer. The authors hired the transcription vendor Appen to run their own human benchmark on the Switchboard (SWB) and CallHome (CH) subsets of the NIST Hub5 2000 test set. Three… 2. **[Direct Acoustics-to-Word Models for English Conversational Speech Recognition](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/audhkhasi-2017-direct-acoustics-word-models-english/)** *(2017 · 121 citations)* The paper asks whether one neural network can turn speech directly into words, with no phone inventory, pronunciation dictionary, language model or decoder. 3. **[Building competitive direct acoustics-to-word models for English conversational speech recognition](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/audhkhasi-2017-building-competitive-direct-acoustics-word/)** *(2017 · 111 citations)* Direct acoustics-to-word (A2W) models map speech straight to whole words with one neural network. They need no pronunciation lexicon, no decoder and no separately trained language model. Earlier work suggested such models need vastly more audio than phone- or character-based systems, and the authors' own previous A2W… 4. **[The IBM 2015 English Conversational Telephone Speech Recognition System](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/saon-2015-ibm-2015-english-conversational-telephone/)** *(2015 · 96 citations)* The paper reports how IBM improved its English recognizer for conversational telephone speech. The benchmark is the Switchboard part of the Hub5-2000 evaluation. Training used 1975 hours of two-party phone conversations from Switchboard 1, Fisher and CallHome. The authors argue that no single trick is enough and that… 5. **[On the limit of English conversational speech recognition](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/tuske-2021-limit-english-conversational-speech-recognition/)** *(2021 · 49 citations)* The paper asks how much further attention-based encoder-decoder ASR can be pushed on the Switchboard conversational telephone benchmark. The authors start from their earlier heavily regularized single-head LSTM encoder-decoder system. They then add several improvements: 6. **[English Broadcast News Speech Recognition by Humans and Machines](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/thomas-2019-english-broadcast-news-speech-recognition/)** *(2019 · 12 citations)* The paper asks whether deep-learning recipes that brought conversational telephone speech (CTS) recognition near human level also work for English broadcast news (BN). 7. **[The IBM 2016 English Conversational Telephone Speech Recognition System](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/saon-2016-ibm-2016-english-conversational-telephone/)** *(2016 · 3 citations)* The paper reports how IBM pushed English conversational telephone speech recognition to a record word error rate of 6.6% on the Switchboard portion of the Hub5 2000 evaluation. ## Co-authors here 10 co-authors with a page, the most papers together first. - [Michael Picheny](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/michael-picheny/) ×5 - [Bhuvana Ramabhadran](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/bhuvana-ramabhadran/) ×3 - [Brian Kingsbury](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/brian-kingsbury/) ×3 - [Kartik Audhkhasi](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/kartik-audhkhasi/) ×3 - [Gakuto Kurata](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/gakuto-kurata/) ×2 - [Hong-Kwang J. Kuo](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hong-kwang-j-kuo/) ×2 - [Samuel Thomas](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/samuel-thomas/) ×2 - [Steven Rennie](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/steven-rennie/) ×2 - [Tom Sercu](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/tom-sercu/) ×2 - [Zoltan Tuske](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/zoltan-tuske/) ×2 ## Venues Where their works here were published, the most works first, with the editions of those that have a page. - [Interspeech](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/interspeech-usb/) ×4: [Interspeech 2021](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/interspeech-usb/2021/), [Interspeech 2017](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/interspeech-usb/2017/) ×2, [Interspeech 2015](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/interspeech-usb/2015/) - [IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/ieee-international-conference-on-acoustics-speech-and-signal-processing/) ×2: [IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing 2019](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/ieee-international-conference-on-acoustics-speech-and-signal-processing/2019/), [IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing 2017](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/ieee-international-conference-on-acoustics-speech-and-signal-processing/2017/) ## Cited by Papers of our library cite their works 70 times (of the 141,840 papers whose bibliographies we read); [12 citing papers with a page here →](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/george-saon/cited-by/). Updated 24 October 2026