Clarity Introduces New VP and CTO

TROY, MI - Clarity LLC announced that it has hired noise, echo and signal processing industry veteran Michael Hayes as vice president and chief technology officer. Jim Wargnier has been promoted to executive vice president of engineering operations. "Clarity was presented with the opportunity to add Michael to the team and given his particular knowledge of this field, education, experience and skills; it was too compelling to pass-up," said Raymond Gunn, president and chief executive officer of Clarity. "Clarity is committed to building the strongest team and best technology in this industry and continues to attract and retain the most experienced and dedicated professionals in the world. With the addition of Mike, Jim will be able to better utilize his unique ability to anticipate customer needs and increase his contribution to the development of Clarity's vision." Hayes spent six years with NCT Group Inc., most recently as senior vice president and CTO. He was responsible for leading the development and technical transfer of NCT's audio signal processing algorithms, software and embedded systems as well as leading the development and technical transfer of its audio transducers. The latter include the piezoelectric flat-panel speaker and the Micro Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) microphone (or silicon microphone). Hayes also has a strong academic background in automated speech recognition (ASR) systems in addition to his experience with TI DSPs and the TI Express DSP licensing program (in which Clarity is already well established). Hayes has a PhD in engineering (applied science) from University of California, Davis and a master of science degree in electrical and computer engineering from Johns Hopkins. After an academic career in plasma physics, he worked in the semiconductor industry for Texas Instruments and then as an engineering manager in the aerospace industry for General Electric and Martin Marietta. Hayes' last job, prior to his career in signal processing, took him to a variety of research stations and field camps in Antarctica, including the South Pole. "Clarity is in position with its award winning technology to successfully target the entire voice interface market," said Hayes. "I know and respect this company as a leader in voice processing. Clarity's outstanding core technology is complemented by its superb team of algorithm developers and software engineers. I look forward to pushing the envelope with this team-it will be Clarity's job to ensure that Jim has the best product suite in the industry to address customer needs."