Biographies: Sidney Thomas Emerson, 1987, Winn Parish, LA. Submitted by Greggory E. Davies, 120 Ted Price Lane, Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** From: February 11, 1987 Winn Parish Enterprise News-American Tommy Emerson, Talented, Successful Winnfield Native Sidney Thomas Emerson, better known in his hometown of Winnfield, Louisiana as Tommy, is the son of the late Joe H. and Byrd Nelson Emerson of Main Street. This 1959 graduate of Winnfield High School, who earned his bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is now heading yet another company in the innovative field of electronics. His current company's voice-response system, INFOBOT, is a machine which has human touch with phones. Using the human voice, INFOBOT answers inquiries or handles requests for account balances, loan rates, and pay-offs, bill paying and many other financial transactions. The automated inquiry system comes from SYNTELLECT, INC., a Phoenix company with S. Thomas Emerson as its president and chief executive, which dabbles in the field of artificial intelligence. SYNTELLECT unveiled INFOBOT at a trade show on automated banking in New Orleans in November. The machine, designed to augment, not replace, a company's work force, is estimated to cost a buyer about 25 cents an hour for answering routine and repetitive telephone calls 24 hours a day, all week long. The system was designed to ease labor-intensive functions freeing customer service agents to handle non-routine calls that require personal assistance. (The foregoing information is a synopsis of a Business Section feature in The Phoenix Gazette newspaper.) Emerson was one of four "Entrepreneurial Fellows" participating at the University of Arizona in its 1986 Eller Center annual roundtable discussion among leading entrepreneurs, executives, venture capitalists and academic authorities from throughout the country. The prestigious Karl Eller Center at the University of Arizona, established in 1983 for the Study of Private Market Economy, supports entrepreneurial studies, research in private market processes and interaction between academics and corporate communities. The interesting and informative profile given on the program at the Eller Center Dialogue read: "S. Thomas Emerson "S. Thomas Emerson is president and chief executive of the Phoenix firm Syntellect Incorporated. The company manufactures INFOBOT, a telephone inquiry and data entry system which performs the functions of CRT operators. "Dr. Emerson, who holds a Ph. D. degree in physics from Rice University, has 17 years of high technology executive experience. The owner of three U. S. patents in computer technology, he also holds several foreign patents and has authored more than 20 scientific and technological publications. "Before founding Syntellect, Dr. Emerson was founder and president and chief executive officer of Periphonics Corporation, Bohemia, New York. He also was formerly employed by Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he designed computerized data acquisition equipment for high energy physics experiments."