"Having a distinctive voice is like getting something back that was stolen," John said. These are names of robotic voices that are often programmed on electronic tablets. Pandya has gone on mission trips to South America, and she started a service organization at her school. They also become default identities for people with speech disorders who rely on technology to communicate. But the aspiring biomedical engineer said she was inspired to help someone speak and also fascinated by the technology and the ability to "intertwine two voices." The effort to build an international "Human Voicebank" has attracted more than 17,000 volunteers from 110 countries, including Priyanka Pandya, a 16-year old from Columbia, Md., who plans to spend her winter vacation recording a string of sentences into her laptop. Since she announced the voicebank two years ago, the response has been overwhelming, she said, with donors ages to 91 logging on from all over the world. Her company designs personalized synthetic voices by recording the unique, if limited, sounds of the user, and then blending them with a larger sample - usually six to ten hours of recordings - from a voice donor, matched by age, gender and region. When she decided to bring the technology out of the lab, she developed her own method for blending voices and turned to crowdsourcing to gain access to enough voices to reflect the diversity of potential customers, which could include a middle-aged man from Alabama or a little girl from Ireland. Some have throat cancer or degenerative diseases such as ALS and could eventually become voice recipients. When she decided to bring the technology out of the lab, she developed her own method for blending voices and turned to crowdsourcing to gain access to enough voices to reflect the diversity of potential customers, which could include a middle-aged man from Alabama or a little girl from Ireland. "Even people who are speechless have sounds that are unique to them." Her voice could be used to help one of more than 2 million Americans who have severe speech disorders and need help to communicate, a dilemma captured in the acclaimed new television series "Speechless," whose main character, a teenager with cerebral palsy, relies on technology and a personal aide to act as his "voice" at school. They merge the voices by modifying the donor voice to reflect the qualities of the user's voice. Her voice could be used to help one of more than 2 million Americans who have severe speech disorders and need help to communicate, a dilemma captured in the acclaimed new television series "Speechless," whose main character, a teenager with cerebral palsy, relies on technology and a personal aide to act as his "voice" at school.