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Mark Abramson has served as CEO of MTI since 1989. He is responsible for strategic development of MTI's technology and expansion of the company's live agent services on a nationwide basis, advancing its presence in the areas of IVR, audiotext, direct response, dealer locator, and telemarketing. Mark has more than thirty-two years of experience in digital computer technology and over thirty years of experience in speech technology. He began his career during his undergraduate and graduate studies, during which he engaged in various natural language processing ventures. He rewrote Naval Research Laboratory text-to-speech algorithms, which led to the creation of an inexpensive computer capable of speaking the Wall Street Journal®. Mark based his Master's Thesis on the work he conducted enhancing software developed by Dr. E. J. Corey, 1990 Nobel Prize Winner in Chemistry. Mark built a natural language interface for Dr. Corey's LHASA (Logic and Heuristics Applied to Synthetic Analysis) software and was the first researcher outside of the Corey's research group ever to have access to it. Mark later consulted for General Electric on the use of speech recognition and received a grant from the company to develop a voice controlled lecture series about the anatomy of the human eye that would allow a lecturer to manipulate a television display and simple animation using voice recognition. As a result of his consulting work with General Electric, Mark also provided speech consulting to Hitachi . Mark also gained experience in telephony, where he developed a voice-controlled telephone set and established Voice Computer Technologies, Inc. (VCT) in 1980. He was Chairman and Executive Vice-President of Research and Development and generated the world's first IVR college class registration system. Mark and his marketing partner succeeded in raising $4 million in venture funds and private financing for the company before it was sold to Davox Corporation in 1984. | 