Language Technologies Institute students Jonathan Francis and Juncheng (Billy) Li are the inaugural recipients of Bosch SCS Graduate Research Fellowships.

The fellowships were made possible by a gift this fall from the Bosch Group. The fellows' research will strengthen Bosch's capabilities in human-machine interaction (HMI) technologies, and will be performed in close coordination with the Bosch Research and Technology Center's Pittsburgh office.

Francis, an LTI Ph.D. student, has research interests including conversational AI, especially in the context of smart environments, with focuses in multimodal sensing, statistical inference, knowledge representation and decision-making. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees, with honors, from CMU's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is advised by Professor Eric Nyberg.

Li, a master's student, has research interests in deep learning, multimedia machine learning, natural language processing and audio/speech processing. He earned a bachelor's degree at Tongji University in Shanghai, China, and a dual master's degree in advanced infrastructure systems and engineering technology innovation and management at CMU. He is advised by Associate Research Professor Florian Metze.

Bosch Research and Technology Center North America (RTC-NA) has offices in Palo Alto, Calif.; Cambridge, Mass.; and Pittsburgh. It's part of the global Bosch Group (www.bosch.com) — headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany — with more than 70 billion EUR in revenue, 400,000 employees worldwide, diverse industrial and commercial product portfolios, and a legacy of more than 125 years. It has worked closely with CMU for almost two decades.

The focus of Bosch's global HMI research includes conversational AI, visual computing, audio and language processing, smart wearables and haptics, user experience, and human factors. The R&D team develops intuitive, interactive and intelligent solutions that facilitate inspiring collaboration between human and machine for Bosch products and services in such application areas as: autonomous driving, car infotainment and driver assistance systems (ADAS), intelligent and context-aware personal assistance, Industry 4.0 and the internet of things, security systems, smart home and building solutions, health care, and robotics.