Professor, Purdue University

Dr. Ronnie Wilbur has investigated the educational and linguistic factors that inhibit full development of English literacy by deaf children. Her current research focuses on the structure of sign languages and what that tells us about the nature of language and cognition. Specific ongoing projects include: Non-manuals (facial expressions) and their role in syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and prosody (intonation); an innovative linguistic-computational approach to automatic sign recognition; and a comparison of American Sign Language, Austrian Sign Language, and Croatia Sign Language. In addition to her duties as a Professor and Chair of Linguistics at Purdue University, Dr. Wilbur is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Sign Language & Linguistics. Dr. Wilbur will be responsible for the linguistic design considerations of MathSpeak™, and will coordinate the Purdue team's research in this area. Dr. Wilbur will also assist gh with the input-output considerations needed for the development of a custom Text-to-Speech engine for MathSpeak™. Dr. Wilbur will also be instrumental in product design considerations for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing users.