About me

  • IPA spelling: /‘dragoʃ ale’ksandru bә’lan/
  • Hometown: Bucharest, RO
  • Residence: Naarden, NL
  • B.Sc.: Computer Science & Engineering (CSE) @ TU Delft (2019-2022)
    • Grade: 8.15/10, Cum Laude
    • Title: Evaluating the Use of Frequency Masking on a Hybrid Automatic Speech Recognizer for Transitional Dutch Accent of JASMIN-CGN Corpus
    • Poster • Paper • Code
  • M.Sc.: Voice Technology (VT) @ University of Groningen - Campus Fryslân (2022-2023)
    • Grade: 9.5/10, Cum Laude + Valedictorian
    • Title: Improving the State-of-the-Art Frisian ASR by fine-tuning Large-Scale Cross-Lingual Pre-Trained Models
    • Paper • Code
  • Junior Researcher @ University of Twente (Sep 2023-Jan 2025) - working on the PDI-SHH Oral History - Stories at the Museum around Artworks (OH-SMArt) project - in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute for Sound & Vision (Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld & Geluid) - more info: under Projects tab
  • Currently:
    • 2nd year Ph.D. Researcher @ University of Twente (Feb 2025-)
      • I will be working as part of 2 projects:
        • HOSAN (HOogwaardige Spraakherkenning voor Al het Nederlands): A project with the end goal of creating a Dutch Speech Foundational Model.
        • Medispeech: A project where the platform of communication between medical providers and patients is facilitated through the use of AI such as speech recognition and LLMs.
    • Web Chair - Interspeech 2025 (Jun 2024-)