Dr. Eugenia San Segundo

Tenured Scientist at CSIC Madrid

I am Tenured Scientist in Experimental and Applied Phonetics at CSIC, and director of the Phonetics Laboratory (CSIC). I also lead the research project How deepfake is your voice? Understanding the linguistic foundations of deepfakes, and I am the editor-in-chief of the journal Loquens.

Research trajectory

In 2014, I defended my doctoral dissertation, which I carried out at the CSIC Phonetics Lab thanks to an FPU grant (2009-2013). During this period, I was also part of the research team in the CIVIL project (“Cualidad Individual de la Voz para la Identificación de Locutor”) and collaborated with the University of New South Wales in a forensic phonetics project.

Between 2015 and 2017, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of York on the research project “Voice and Identity: source, filter, biometric”. I led a research line on forensic reliability and the integration of the Vocal Profile Analysis (VPA) protocol into ASR systems. The main outcome derived from this project was a publication at the Journal of the International Phonetic Association as first author.

Between 2018 and 2020, I worked as project associate at the Department of Criminal Science & Technology (Shanxi, China). During this period, I developed an open-source tool for the assessment of voice quality, which simplified the VPA protocol implementing visual analog scales. It is published in the Journal of Voice. The tool and derived papers constitute a relevant contribution to knowledge generation, having received numerous citations, including a policy citation by the Ministry of Justice of the Government of the Czech Republic. Other significant contributions are my publication in Journal of Phonetics on the topic of formant dynamics in related speakers, and my top-cited paper in the Q1 journal Forensic Science International.

Between 2020 and 2023, I worked at the Department of Spanish Language & General Linguistics at the National University of Distance Education (UNED), Madrid, with a Beatriz Galindo Distinguished Researcher contract. During this period, I taught several UG and PG courses, coordinated two teaching innovation projects, and supervised 5 master theses and 5 undergraduate theses.

Since January 2024, I have been a tenured scientist at CSIC.

Internationalization

I have completed two research stays in renowned phonetics labs: 3 months at the University of Marburg (2012) and 3 months at the University of Zurich (2017). In Marburg, I developed an important section of my dissertation: the analysis of twins’ voices using an ASR system. In Zurich (funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation), I produced important scientific contributions related to prosody. Besides, I have been member of the International Association for Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics since 2010, I have organized twice its annual conference and won twice its annual call for pilot research projects: in 2011, to study the voices of twins; in 2016, to investigate voice quality practices. In addition, I have given around 20 invited talks in 10 different countries.

Outreach and knowledge transfer

I helped organizing around 15 activities while I was a PhD candidate at the CSIC Phonetics Laboratory, including the 2012 Week of Science and the interview for the popular science magazine QUO (2013). More recently, I organized an activity in the 2021 Week of Science, participated in a radio show at La Ventana, Cadena SER (April 2022) and in a roundtable about fake news and misinformation, organized by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (November 2023). Four of my publications, including my thesis, are mentioned in the Best Practice Manual for the Methodology of Forensic Speaker Comparison published by the European Network of Forensic Sciences Institute.

Industry

I worked as linguistic consultant (2018-20) at the technological company Defined.ai, in several projects aimed at improving the quality of machine learning systems, which led to the signature of a transfer contract (“Artículo 83”) with UNED from 2021 to 2023.

Interests

Applied Linguistics
Experimental Phonetics
Forensic Phonetics
Clinical Phonetics
Sociolinguistics
Computational Linguistics

Education

PhD in Speech Sciences, 2014

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain
MSc in Quantitative Research Methodology & Statistics Techniques, 2010

Statistics Laboratory, Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineering, Polytechnical University of Madrid, Spain
MA in Phonetics & Phonology, 2009

Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Madrid, Spain
BA in Hispanic Studies, 2008

University of Salamanca, Spain
BA in English Studies, 2007

University of Salamanca, Spain

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