Lya Meister

Lya Meister is a Research Fellow at Tallinn University of Technology's School of Information Technologies, Department of Software Science. She has held this position since 2017, continuing her career from the Institute of Cybernetics at TUT where she served as a Research Fellow (2009–2016) and Extraordinary Research Fellow (2005–2008). Her academic background includes a Doctor's Degree in 2011 (University of Tartu) and a Research Master's Degree in 2005 (Tallinn University).

• Education:
  • PhD: University of Tartu, 2005–2011
  • Master's: Tallinn Pedagogical University, Estonian Philology, 2002–2005
  • Bachelor's: Tallinn Pedagogical University, Russian Philology, 1975–1979

Her research focuses on experimental phonetics, speech corpora analysis, and the acoustic characteristics of speech production. Notable projects include the Improving the intelligibility of sung text (2022–2026) and contributions to the Estonian Elderly Speech Corpus. She has organized major conferences like the Phonetics Symposium 2024 and served on international committees for speech technology initiatives.

Her awards include the 2023 School of Information Technologies Paper of the Year and the 2012 Best Paper Award from the Institute of Cybernetics. Her work spans over 68 publications, with recent emphasis on plosive closure duration in singing, vowel-consonant intensity ratios, and developmental phonetic changes in adolescents.