It is with profound sorrow that I must announce the tragic death of my close
colleague and friend Mike Macon. Mike died on Thursday, March 15th in the midst of
a heroic battle with lymphoma due to secondary complications of his treatment.
Mike's death is an enormous loss that fills us all with profound grief. Mike had
worked in the area of speech synthesis for only half a decade, completing his Ph.D.
in 1996. Nevertheless, in these very few years, he has had a phenomenal impact on
the field, both by his scientific contributions, his activities in national and
international organizations, and his work as a teacher and colleague at OGI's
Center for Spoken Language Understanding. The reason for this impact was an
exceptional combination of creativity, ability to deliver, and, most importantly,
personality.
Mike focused on signal processing algorithms for speech modification, which is a
critical area for the next generation of speech synthesis systems. His creative
work was rewarded by the prestigious NSF Career Development Award in 1999, as well
as by several research grants and honors. When you worked closely with him (as I
did, unfortunately for only 9 months), you would be delighted by the sense he
exuded that one can do anything as long as one tries, focuses, plans, and gets
cheerfully excited when meeting new obstacles. Astonishingly, he displayed the same
attitude when he heard about his initial diagnosis: He called, and told the
devastating news in the same way as someone else would report being stuck in
traffic. Mike also had a great and provocative sense of humor. But this hid his
basically shy, and intensely warm nature. He was one of those rare people that no
one forgets, even if you met him just once.
