Sensimetrics Corporation was founded in 1987 with the mission of providing useful tools for researchers, educators, and clinicians in the field of human communication. Sensimetrics Corporation originated in 1985 as The Audiometer Development Group of Belmont, Massachusetts, established to develop instruments for hearing measurement. The company was incorporated under its present name and opened of
fices near MIT in Cambridge in 1987. The principal founders were Bob Berkovitz, a long-time researcher in the audio industry, and Ken Stevens, Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT and a world-renowned expert on speech communication. They were soon joined by Nat Durlach, another distinguished MIT Research Scientist, with expertise in hearing. Berkovitz served as President of Sensimetrics until 1999. He was succeeded as President by Patrick Zurek, another MIT hearing researcher, who continues in the position today. Over the years, many students, post-docs, and researchers from the speech and hearing labs at MIT and other area universities have made important contributions to the work done at Sensimetrics. Since its founding, Sensimetrics has conducted basic research in speech and hearing science and developed related biomedical instrumentation and educational materials. Research support has come from grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense, and from industry clients. Projects have ranged from speech synthesis, to computer-based lipreading instruction, to hearing assistance, measurement, and simulation systems. Descriptions of current projects, and a few past projects, can be found here. In addition to its research activity, Sensimetrics has provided consulting services for many government, legal, and corporate clients. Again, the range of this activity is broad, from speech analysis and voice identification, to verification of the speaker of Winston Churchill’s recorded speeches, to expert testimony on the sounds of buoys bells. Much of our current consulting work is focused on supporting the research efforts of academic and clinical partners. Sensimetrics has always aimed at converting its research efforts into useful products. The company’s first product, Speech Station, was one of the earliest speech analysis programs, and was highly-regarded for the clarity of the spectrograms it produced. Subsequent licensed technology and products were developed in otoacoustic emission measurement, speech synthesis, and computer-based teaching tools, among others. Sensimetrics’ current products (described here — link to Products page) focus on tools for audiology, hearing assistance, and auditory research. Today, Sensimetrics comprises an energetic and multi-talented staff of scientists, engineers, and media designers. They, the Sensimetrics 27 years on from its founding, continue to strive for excellence and innovation in research, consulting, and product development in human communication.
