Francesco Burroni

Hi and welcome to my website.

I am a speech scientist working with articulatory and computational methods. I currently work as a Scientific Staff Member (Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter) with the Bavarian AI Chair in Spoken Language Processing and the Institute for Phonetics and Speech Processing at the LMU Munich, Germany. I also hold a special lecturer affiliation with Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand.

Speaking is one of the most complex activities performed by the central nervous system, requiring the coordination of more than a hundred muscles with precision at the level of millimeters and milliseconds. I investigate the principles that make the production (and perception) of speech possible. I am particularly interested in teasing apart universal aspects – rooted in human physiology and health – from language-specific characteristics – rooted in cultural transmission and evolution – and how these contribute to the astounding diversity of human languages and their continuous change over time.

My research agenda combines state-of-the-art experimental techniques – like electromagnetic articulography and real-time MRI – and computational methods – like dynamical systems and machine learning/AI modeling. I apply this approach to a typologically diverse range of languages, and to different populations of speakers, including adults, children, and, more recently, clinical populations.

The pursuit of knowledge is a collective enterprise and I am always fond of collaborating with others.

News & Updates

  • Jul. 2026 Delighted to report that I received funding from the German Research Foundation (DFG) to lead a 3-year research project to study the rhythmic and temporal organization of speech using real time MRI. Details following soon, stay tuned.

  • Jun. 2026 New paper now out in JASA Express Letters on the magnification and changes in information properties of phonetic vowel-to-vowel co-articulation that leads to phonologized metaphony sound change. It is joint work with my great co-authors Pia Greca (first author) and Jonathan Harrington. Link here.

  • Jun. 2026: Co-authors and I have four upcoming contributions at Labphon20 in Montréal:

    • Voicing as a whole-vocal-tract articulation: Evidence from an MRI study of Quebec French bilabial stops

      [with J. Riverin-Coutlée]

      located at the Articulatory Control Workshop

    • Phonological Length Contrasts as Articulatory “Tasks”

      [with S. Maspong]

      located at the Articulatory Control Workshop

    • Articulatory characteristics of vowel length in Thai: Intrinsic vs extrinsic accounts

      [with S. Maspong (first author) and J. Kirby]

      Talk in the Articulation Session

    • Distributed Articulatory Control underlies Singleton/Geminate Contrasts Production: Evidence from Italian EMA Data across Speaking Rates

      [with S. Maspong, P. Hoole, J. Kirby]

      Poster Session 3

      If you are attending the conference please stop by and see you in Montréal.

  • Jun. 2026: I gave an invited talk at the University of Cologne summarizing several years of research on tone and articulation. Before and after the talk, I had a fantastic time visiting Prof. Simon Rössig’s group and the Phonetics department. I heard all about the very interesting research being conducted there and their EMA and prosody work. Looking forward to my next visit and future interactions.

  • Jun. 2026: New paper on Articulatory Control in Japanese Geminate production now out in Laboratory Phonology. It is joint work with fantastic co-authors Lia Saki Bučar Shigemori, Shigeto Kawahara, and Jason Shaw. You will find it here (currently being copyedited).

  • Jan. 2026: New paper on voicing and gemination effects on f0 in Italian now out in JASA Express Letters. It is joint work with my great co-authors Sireemas Maspong and James Kirby. You can find it here.

  • Jan. 2026: I gave an invited talk at the University of Potsdam. After the talk, I had a fantastic time visiting Prof. Adamantios Gafos’ group. It was the perfect occasion to hear about all the cool research being pursued and exchange ideas. Looking forward to the next visit.