Jan G. Švec, Ph.D.

was a Visiting Scientist at the National
Center for Voice and Speech. Jan is a physicist, who is
especially interested in voice and voice physiology.
From February 2001 to February 2004 he was leading the NCVS team performing research on occupational safety in vocalization (grant principal investigator: I.R. Titze). During this time he contributed to the development of the methods for measurement of vocal load (voice dosimetry), as well as to the development of a portable pocket-PC-based voice dosimeter, which measures long-term exposure of the human vocal folds to vibrations caused by speech. His home affiliation is at the Center for Communication Disorders, Medical Healthcom, Ltd., Prague, the Czech Republic.

He graduated in Optics and Fine Mechanics (M.Sc. degree in Physics) at the Palacký University in Olomouc, the Czech Republic in 1990 and made his master-thesis entitled The Mechanism of the Resonance System of the Organ of Voice, devoted mainly to accelerometry of the vibration of the Thyroid cartilage during phonation, under the supervision of Josef Pešák.

Since 1993 he has been closely cooperating with H.K. Schutte and D.G. Miller in the Voice Research Lab at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He designed and, together with H.K. Schutte and the Lambert Instruments BV company, developed VIDEOKYMOGRAPHY, a method for the high-speed imaging of vocal fold vibration (now distributed by Kay Elemetrics Corp). In collaboration with František Šram the method has been applied to clinical practice in Prague, the Czech Republic. Jan Švec has been working on further applications, improvement and development of this method.

In 1996, he defended his thesis entitled Studies of the Mechanical-Acoustical Properties of the Human Voice Source at the Palacký University in Olomouc, the Czech Republic (Ph.D. degree in Biophysics). In June 2000 he defended his doctoral dissertation entitled On Vibration Properties of Human Vocal Folds: Voice Registers, Bifurcations, Resonance Characteristics, Development and Application of Videokymography at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands (Ph.D. degree in Medical Sciences).

He contributed to over 60 scientific papers published in journals and proceedings as well as over 150 scientific presentations at Congresses, Symposia and Seminars in Europe, North America, Australia and Africa. His video program Introduction to Videokymography, coauthored by H. K. Schutte and F. Šram, was awarded a silver medal for The Best ScientificVideo at the XVI. World ORL Congress in Sydney, Australia in 1997.

Jan Švec is an amateur jazz singer, guitar and mouth-harmonica player and song composer. In 1983-1992 he was leading an acoustic-jazz group PIANO, which received major Czech national awards (e.g., PORTA 1989).

For a partial - but continuously updated - list of Dr. Svec's publications, explore the National Library of Medicine's website, PubMed. [Note: this link will open in a new browser window. Close it when you are done to return to ncvs.org]

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