A professor in Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science has earned a top honor for his decades of work in the field of speech translation.

Alex Waibel will receive the 2023 James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award from the Institute of Electric and Electronic Engineering (IEEE) in recognition of his groundbreaking contributions to spoken language translation and supporting technologies.

Waibel, a professor in both the Language Technologies Institute and Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, has had an expansive career full of firsts. He demonstrated the first consecutive and simultaneous translation systems, developed the first commercial speech translation system on a mobile phone, created the first simultaneous lecture interpretation service, and pioneered dialogue translators for humanitarian missions and interpretation support for the European Parliament. He has also founded or co-founded nearly a dozen companies, including Jibbigo and KITES, which were acquired by Facebook and Zoom, respectively.

Most recently, Waibel has worked to extend spoken language technology to automatic video dubbing, creating lipsynchronous videos — videos translated into other languages that use the speaker's own voice. The technology can be used for video conferencing, movie dubbing or low bandwidth video transmission. Waibel tested the text-to-video use during a dive to the Titanic wreck site, where transmission can only be done by sonar. Text messages from the deep were transmitted to the surface and resynthesized as video chat on the ship.

IEEE selects Flanagan Award recipients based on their impact on the field, innovation, leadership, publications or patents, honors or seminal contributions, and more. Waibel joins a cohort of less than 25 researchers worldwide who have earned this prestigious award since its 2002 inception, including CMU's Raj Reddy, who received the honor in 2008. As part of the award, Waible will receive a bronze medal, certificate and $10,000 honorarium. He will be honored for his achievement this coming June during the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing in Greece.