An opening ceremony was held in Hefei on Tuesday for the Laboratory of Speech and Language Information Processing, of which the establishment had been approved by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic planner.

The laboratory is the only state-level intelligent speech research institution in the country and the first national engineering lab in Hefei, capital city of Anhui province.

Consisting of 11 major divisions each engaged in speech synthesis, recognition and so on, the laboratory aims to develop into a national strategic platform for the speech and language industry in the next few years and boost the country's independent innovation abilities of speech and language technology, with the help of its founders- the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) and the USTC iFLYTEK Co.

Bai Chunli, president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Ni Fake, vice governor of Anhui, attended the ceremony.

Source Link:http://english.anhuinews.com/system/2011/09/29/004462298.shtml