Bio

Alexander Waibel is Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (USA) and at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany). He is director of the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies. Waibel is known for his work on AI, Machine Learning, Multimodal Interfaces and Speech Translation Systems. He proposed early Neural Network based Speech and Language systems, including the TDNN, the first shift-invariant (“Convolutional”) Neural Network, and early Neural Language systems. Based on advances in ML he and his team developed innovative early multimodal interfaces (e.g., emotion recognition, face tracker, lipreading, error repair, meeting browser, smart rooms, human-robot collaboration) and pioneered cross-lingual communication systems to overcome language barriers: first consecutive (1992) and first simultaneous speech translation (2005) systems; road sign, augmented reality, face/lip and EMG translators. Waibel founded more than 10 companies to transfer academic results to practical deployment. This included “Jibbigo” (2009), the first speech translator on a phone, “Lecture Translator”, the first automatic simultaneous translation service (2012) and several medical transcription services. With ~1,000 publications, patents and articles, Waibel published extensively in the field. Waibel is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of Germany and a Fellow of the IEEE. He received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from MIT and CMU, respectively.

Courses - English