Biography:Alex Waibel

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Short description: American computer scientist
Alex Waibel
Alexander Waibel.jpg
Alex Waibel (2018)
Born2 May 1956
Heidelberg, Germany
AwardsIEEE Senior Best Paper Award (1990), Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence (2002), Antonio Zampolli Prize (2014), Meta Prize (2011 & 2016), James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award (2023)
Academic background
Alma materMassachusetts Institute of Technology (BS), Carnegie Mellon University (MS, PhD)
Doctoral advisorRaj Reddy
Academic work
DisciplineComputer Science
Sub-disciplineArtificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning
InstitutionsCarnegie Mellon University, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Notable studentsLaurence Devillers

Alexander Waibel (born 2 May 1956 in Heidelberg, Germany) is a professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Waibel's research interests focus on speech recognition and translation[1] and human communication signals and systems.[2] Alex Waibel made pioneering contributions to speech translation systems, breaking down language barriers through cross-lingual speech communication. In fundamental research on machine learning, he is known for the Time Delay Neural Network (TDNN),[3] the first Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) trained by gradient descent, using backpropagation.[4] Alex Waibel introduced the TDNN 1987 at ATR in Japan.

The BBC quoted Alex Waibel on his motivation: "We don’t want to look things up in dictionaries – so I wanted to build a machine to translate speech."[5]

Life

Alex Waibel graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a BS in electrical engineering, and from Carnegie Mellon University, with an MS and PhD in computer science.[6][7]

Waibel is the director of interACT,[8] the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies. He was one of the founders of C-STAR,[9] an international consortium for speech translation research, and served as its chairman from 1998 to 2000. Waibel directed the CHIL program [10] (FP-6 Integrated Project on multimodality) in Europe and NSF-ITR project STR-DUST (the first domain independent speech translation project) in the U.S. He was project coordinator of the IP EU-BRIDGE,[11] funded by the EC (2012-2014).

At C-STAR, his team developed the JANUS[12] speech translation system, the first American and European Speech Translation system, and more recently the first real-time simultaneous speech translation system for lectures. His lab has also developed several multimodal systems including perceptual meeting rooms, meeting recognizers, meeting browsers, and multimodal dialog systems for humanoid robots.

In the areas of speech, speech translation, and multimodal interfaces Waibel holds several patents[13] and has founded and co-founded several successful commercial ventures. He is the founder and chairman of Mobile Technologies, LLC, maker of the Jibbigo mobile speech-to-speech translation app which uses speech recognition and machine translation.

In 2012, Waibel produced a video lecture demonstrating the world's first automatic simultaneous translation service at a university, stating that "the lecture translator automatically records, transcribes and translates the speech of a lecturer in real-time, and students can follow the lecture in their language on their PC or mobile phone."[14]

In 2013, he joined Facebook Inc. to start the Language Technology Group which would eventually become part of Facebook's broader Applied Machine Learning efforts.[15] He is a director at Multimodal Technologies, Inc.[16]

In October 2018, Waibel closed out a successful legal case against Wikimedia Foundation citing German libel laws.[17]

From 2019 to 2023, he directed OML (Organic Machine Learning) funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany), a fundamental research project to develop incremental and interactive machine learning, aiming to help AI better handle surprise in language and robotics.

Awards and Honors

Alex Waibel is a recipient of the IEEE Senior Best Paper Award for work on the TDNN (1990). He was awarded the Alcatel-SEL "Forschungspreis Technische Kommunikation" in 1994 for his work on computer speech translation systems. In 2002, he received the Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence and the Meta Prize in 2011 with Jibbigo Mobile Translators for outstanding mobile voice translators bringing speech translation to mobile devices. In 2014, he was the recipient of the Antonio Zampolli Prize for “outstanding contributions to the advancement of Language Resources and Language Technology Evaluation within Human Language Technology”, LREC.[18] With InterACT, he was awarded a second Meta Prize for “Outstanding and Innovative Contributions to Cross-Lingual and Multilingual Communication Technologies” (2016). He received the Life-Time Achievement Award of the ACM-ICMI for his work on multimodal interfaces (2019).[19] In 2023, he became the 21st honoree to receive the IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award for "pioneering work on speech translation and supporting technologies".[20]

He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) and a Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Germany, Leopoldina[21] since 2017. In 2023, Waibel was inducted as Fellow into the Explorers Club citing aviation expeditions and deep sea exploration.[22]

References

  1. ↑ "Alex Waibel". http://www.cmu.edu/g20/media/alphabetical/waibel.html. 
  2. ↑ "Alex Waibel". http://www.csd.cs.cmu.edu/research/faculty_research/waibel.html. 
  3. ↑ Alex Waibel et al, Phoneme Recognition Using Time-Delay Neural Networks IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Volume 37, No. 3, pp. 328. - 339 March 1989.
  4. ↑ Waibel, Alex (December 1987). "Phoneme Recognition Using Time-Delay Neural Networks". Meeting of the Institute of Electrical, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE). Tokyo, Japan. 
  5. ↑ Moskvitch, Katia (15 February 2017). "The machines that learned to listen". http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170214-the-machines-that-learned-to-listen. 
  6. ↑ "Alex Waibel". https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~ahw/. 
  7. ↑ "Curriculum Vitae Prof. Dr. Alexander Waibel". Leopoldina Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften. https://www.leopoldina.org/fileadmin/redaktion/Mitglieder/CV_Waibel_Alexander_EN.pdf. 
  8. ↑ (IAR), Roedder, Margit (30 September 2016). "InterACT- Startseite". http://interact.ira.uka.de. 
  9. ↑ (inaktiv), Schweizer, Dorothea (28 August 2012). "KIT - C-STAR". http://isl.anthropomatik.kit.edu/english/130.php. 
  10. ↑ "CHIL - Computers In the Human Interaction Loop". http://i13pc106.ira.uka.de/fileadmin/templates/HTML/CHIL/servlet/is/101/index.html. 
  11. ↑ Daroussi, Younes. "EU-BRIDGE". http://www.eu-bridge.eu. 
  12. ↑ (IAR), Roedder, Margit (26 January 2018). "KIT - Janus Recognition Toolkit". http://isl.anthropomatik.kit.edu/english/1406.php. 
  13. ↑ "Alex Waibel Inventions, Patents and Patent Applications - Justia Patents Search". http://patents.justia.com/inventor/alex-waibel. 
  14. ↑ Waibel, Alex (2012). "Simultaneous Interpretation by Machines - Simultanübersetzung durch Maschinen - the world's first automatic simultaneous translation service at a university" (in en-US). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5lL0wpr-88. 
  15. ↑ "Facebook to acquire Pittsburgh-based Mobile Technologies | TribLIVE.com". https://archive.triblive.com/news/wire-stories/facebook-to-acquire-pittsburgh-based-mobile-technologies/. 
  16. ↑ "Alex Waibel". https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=22199036&privcapId=13008284. 
  17. ↑ "Raue LLP successful against Wikipedia". October 31, 2018. https://raue.com/en/news/industries/media-and-telecommunications/media/raue-llp-successful-against-wikipedia/. 
  18. ↑ "And the winner is...". http://lrec2014.lrec-conf.org/en/antonio-zampolli-prize/and-winner/. 
  19. ↑ "ICMI 2019 Awards". https://icmi.acm.org/2019/index.php?id=award. 
  20. ↑ "IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award Recipients". https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/about/awards/recipients/flanagan-rl.pdf.. 
  21. ↑ "List of Members". https://www.leopoldina.org/en/members/list-of-members/member/8288/. 
  22. ↑ "Waibel Named Explorers Club Fellow" (in en). https://www.cs.cmu.edu/news/2023/waibel-explorers-club. 

External links



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