Jared Bernstein, PhD

Co-Founder, President

Dr. Bernstein has been active in the development of speech technology and product design for over 25 years. Dr. Bernstein was Principal Scientist at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI International) where he served as Principal Investigator for projects sponsored by DARPA, NSF and NIH. He co-founded an earlier company, Ordinate Corporation (1998-2008) that applied speech-processing technology to build fully automatic spoken language tests for non-native speakers. Following the acquisition of Ordinate Corporation by Pearson (PsychCorp), Bernstein co-founded Tasso Partners LLC to conduct research and product development activities. He designed and developed several assessment products for Pearson (e.g. TELL). Dr. Bernstein was a Rackham Prize Fellow at the University of Michigan where he received his PhD in psycholinguistics before a postdoc at MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics. He has served as Adjunct Professor in the Stanford University Linguistics Department since 1985.

Mike Crepeau, MA

EVP Business Development, Marketing, Partnerships

Crepeau has over 20 years of experience in the K-12 education. His experience in education includes educational research and development (standards and assessment), large-scale assessment contract program management, client relations, business development, sales leadership, and general management responsibilities. During this time, Crepeau has worked for organizations that span the educational space, including those focused on assessment, curriculum, and technology, including WestEd, Educational Testing Service (ETS), and Pearson. Most recently, prior to joining AMI, Crepeau served as Vice President and Market General Manager for Pearson's K-12 Learning Services group, where he was responsible for sales and marketing efforts for Pearson's K-12 products. Crepeau holds a B.A. in English from the University of California, Berkeley and M.A. in English Education from New York University (NYU).

Masa Suzuki, MA

VP, Test Development and Client Relations 

Suzuki is an applied linguist and language testing expert with more than 15 years of experience in developing and validating automated language assessment products for both formative and high-stakes purposes. Prior to joining AMI in 2018, Suzuki was Director of Test Development at Pearson where he managed a team of test developers for artificial intelligence scoring services and products for speaking and writing. He managed a number of test development and scoring-service development projects during his 15 years of tenure at Pearson. These include the Versant suite of spoken language tests, Pearson Test of English - Academic, AZELLA (Arizona English Language Learning Assessment), TELPAS (Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System), and an award-winning digital language assessment tool, Test of English Language Learning (TELL). Suzuki has an MA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and an Executive MBA, both from San Francisco State University. He is author or co-author of many peer-reviewed research publications. 

Jian Cheng, PhD

Co-Founder, CEO/CTO

Dr. Cheng has over 15 years of experience in developing commercial products and services that use machine learning to automate educational testing. Prior to co-founding AMI, Cheng was chief scientistand director of research services at Knowledge Technologies, Pearson.  Cheng led development projects that automatically score hundreds of millions of student responses (both spoken and written) each year.  This includes the production deployment of automated scoring behind several language testing products, including all Versant tests and other high-stakes assessments of speech and text, such as the Pearson Test of English Academic, Arizona’s official AZELLA tests, and Pearson’s tablet-delivered language proficiency assessment for children, TELL.  Dr. Cheng holds a B.E. from Tsinghua University, an M.E. from the Automation Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a PhDin Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. He is author or co-author of many peer-reviewed research publications. 

Elizabeth Rosenfeld, MS, PhD

Co-Founder, Computer Scientist, Clinical Psychologist

Dr. Rosenfeld received her professional degree in computer science from the University of Buenos Aires and then worked as an instructor and researcher in both the Computer Science and the Engineering departments of that University. At IMAGEN Corporation, Rosenfeld designed and developed interpreters, emulators, intelligent interfaces for laser printers.  She then got a Masters and Doctoral degree in Clinical Psychology and developed an automatic analysis of vocal manifestations of mood or affect. In projects at Ordinate Corporation and Tasso Partners LLC, Rosenfeld led the content development (items, lexicon, data collection and management) and validation for Pearson’s Versant Spanish Test, and has worked on the design of apps for automatic assessment of children’s oral reading fluency, measurement of spoken politeness, and monitoring of changes in the state of psychiatric outpatients.

Tomoyo Okuda, PhD

Educational Test Developer

Dr. Okuda is an experienced language education specialist with extensive background in test development, research, and editing. She holds a B.A. in English Language Studies, a M.A. in Linguistics from Sophia University, and a Ph.D. in Teaching English as a Second Language from the University of British Columbia. After receiving her masters degree, she started her teaching career as a secondary school English teacher in Japan. Upon entering her Ph.D. program, she taught writing, language, and other English-related courses to international students at the UBC-Ritsumeikan Academic English Program and Vantage College, where she developed a variety of language tests. She has conducted multiple research projects on English education in Japan, which have been published in major applied linguistics journals.