Expert Software Engineer at Tele Atlas
Gent Area, Belgium
- Current
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- Expert Software Engineer at Tele Atlas
- Past
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- Owner & Managing Director at Prompt! Speech Applications
- Linguistic Advisor at Odiogo
- Researcher at University of Antwerp, Belgium
- Group Manager Voice Application Development at MagicPhone, a Tellme Company
- Language Modelling Engineer & Team Manager at Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
- System Manager & Web Project Manager at Allmansland
- Language Engineer at Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems
- Education
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- Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Belgium
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
- University of Essex
- Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
- Sint-Jan Berchmanscollege, Brussel
- Connections
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280
connections
- Industry
- Information Technology and Services
- Websites
Frederik Durant’s Summary
Frederik Durant, MA, MSc, MBA has 15 years experience as a software developer, project leader and consultant in the field of language, speech and Internet technology. He speaks five natural languages, and is proficient in Perl, Java & PHP. As a Certified ScrumMaster, he prefers to work in agile LAMP environments.
In his career, Frederik has been involved in machine translation (Siemens Nixdorf), database-driven websites (Allmansland), mass-market dictation products (L&H), speech-driven phone applications (Tellme Europe), biomedical text mining (University of Antwerp), and again speech applications (as a freelancer).
On 22 February 2010 Frederik joined the Tele Atlas engineering department in Ghent, to contribute to process automation and improvement efforts.
Frederik Durant’s Specialties:
Learn complex stuff by reading, listening and doing, so that I can explain and show it in as simple terms as possible (but not simpler than that) to myself and other people. Make people connect. Strong interest and expertise in observing and driving group dynamics and culture. Turn defensive attitudes into positive ones by asking the right questions at the right time to the right people in the right setting. Blogging, writing (in prose), proofreading, speaking in public. In short, being social.
Frederik Durant’s Experience
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Expert Software Engineer
Tele Atlas
(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)
February 2010 — Present (2 months)
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Owner & Managing Director
Prompt! Speech Applications
(Privately Held; Computer Software industry)
July 2004 — February 2010 (5 years 8 months)
http://blog.prompt-speechapps.com/
Projects/ references include:
- Dictaphone (now part of Nuance Communications): semi-automated classification of abbreviations and acronyms in medical reports
- Microsoft USA (via Butler Hill Group): spec writing on Dutch date, phone number and other formats in the framework of handwriting recognition
- Speak to the Stars USA (now defunct MTV partner): Beavis and Butthead Hotline
- Dexia Bank (via Dimension Data): speaker verification of high net worth (=VIP) customers
- Quentris: voice user interface usability audit of EVA, the Electronic Voice Assistant
- Belgacom: VoiceXML teaching in Dutch & French
- The Ring Ring Company: speech tech program management, design and development of Belgian address recognition solution for phone, SMS and chat channels; design & development of speech and SMS interface for mobile ticketing; Web Service development in Perl & Java
- KPN Business Belgium: migration of a telco switch provisioning system -
Linguistic Advisor
Odiogo
(Information Technology and Services industry)
November 2006 — October 2008 (2 years )
Part-time consulting and development work in a start-up environment. Some marketing (white paper writing, newsletter review), primarily design & development of various linguistic improvement processes. See www.odiogo.com
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Researcher
University of Antwerp, Belgium
(Educational Institution; Research industry)
February 2003 — May 2004 (1 year 4 months)
Adapted machine learning models for shallow parsing to biomedical articles.
Set up a distributed software development environment including source code control and continuous integration.
http://www.biomint.org/
http://www.cnts.ua.ac.be/LTG/index.html -
Group Manager Voice Application Development
MagicPhone, a Tellme Company
(Information Technology and Services industry)
September 2001 — October 2002 (1 year 2 months)
Headed a 7-person team responsible for the development of multilingual speech-enabled phone applications written in VoiceXML.
Automated the software development life cycle, starting from scratch.
Transformed a group of geographically dispersed people into a smoothly running team, based on a participatory management style and self-development.
One-week trip to the Tellme headquarters in Mountain View, CA; instilled bits of Silicon Valley culture in the team, where beneficial, and with moderation.
Mother company: http://www.tellme.com/ (now part of Microsoft) -
Language Modelling Engineer & Team Manager
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products
(Public Company; Computer Software industry)
May 1998 — August 2001 (3 years 4 months)
Personnel representative in Works Council and press spokesman for L&H employees during a severe company crisis that led to Chapter 11 and bankruptcy.
Created and managed Text Corpus Engineering group
Created an managed Dictation Tools group; responsible for redesign and productization of statistical language model production process.
Language Modelling engineer responsible for creation of statistical language models. -
System Manager & Web Project Manager
Allmansland
(Information Technology and Services industry)
July 1996 — May 1998 (1 year 11 months)
Linux sysadmin, Perl programming, database-driven website development.
People management, with hiring & firing responsibility.
Main achievement: development of a 50.000 page website for the European Commission in eleven languages, including (modern) Greek. -
Language Engineer
Siemens Nixdorf Information Systems
(Public Company; Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing industry)
July 1994 — June 1996 (2 years )
SECC project: English to Simplified English machine translation.
Responsible for lexicon coding, software configuration and release management.
Frederik Durant’s Education
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Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, Belgium
Executive MBA , General Management , September 2002 — July 2004
Magna Cum Laude
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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
MSc , Computer Science (spec. Computational Linguistics) , 1990 — 1995
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University of Essex
Erasmus Exchange Student , Computational Linguistics , 1990 — 1991
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Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
MA , Romance Philology (French - Spanish) , 1986 — 1990
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Sint-Jan Berchmanscollege, Brussel
Secondary Education , Ancient Greek - Mathematics , 1980 — 1986
Additional Information
Frederik Durant’s Websites:
Frederik Durant’s Groups:
Vlerick Alumni, ContactCentres.be
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Vlerick Leuven Gent Alumni -
The Language Technology Group -
K.U.Leuven Computer Science Alumni -
VoiceXML Forum -
VVKSM - Scouts en Gidsen Vlaanderen -
BetaGroup Belgium -
SPEECH Community -
OpenCoffee Club Brussels -
Natural Language Processing People -
Certified ScrumMasters -
Lernout & Hauspie Alumni -
MBA & ICT -
Tele Atlas -
St Jan BerchmansCollege Brussel - oud leerlingen
Frederik Durant’s Honors:
Bronze INCA Award for speech application "realtime Belgian train times", see http://traininfo.i-speech.com/
Winner of the quadrilingual (NL-FR-EN-DE) dictation contest "Dictee van de Toekomst", organised by JCI Vlaanderen, Brussels, 1996
Finalist of the Groot Dictee Der Nederlandse Taal, Dutch Parliament, The Hague, December 1991
Frederik Durant’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
- consulting offers
- expertise requests
- business deals
- reference requests
- getting back in touch
