Xuedong Huang

Xuedong D. Huang (born October 20, 1962) is a Chinese American computer scientist and technology executive who has made contributions to spoken language processing and AI Cognitive Services. He is Microsoft's Technical Fellow and Chief Technology Officer of Azure AI. Huang is a strong advocate of AI for Good, AI for Accessibility, and AI for Cultural Heritage.

Education

Huang received his PhD in EE from the University of Edinburgh in 1989 (sponsored by the British ORS and Edinburgh University Scholarship), his MS in CS from Tsinghua University in 1984, and BS in CS from Hunan University in 1982.

Career

After receiving his PhD in 1989, Huang joined Carnegie Mellon University and worked with Raj Reddy and Kai-Fu Lee on speech recognition. At CMU, he directed the Sphinx-II speech system research which achieved the best performance in every category of DARPA's 1992 benchmarking. Microsoft Research recruited him to found and lead Microsoft's spoken language initiatives in 1993. His co-authored book ''Spoken Language Processing'' and his ''Historical speech recognition review'' succinctly summarize several generations of spoken language research. As Microsoft's ''Mr. Speech'' for nearly three decades, Huang has been instrumental in creating Microsoft's Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI), shipping Microsoft Speech Server, and modernizing spoken language and integrative AI services via Azure AI Cognitive Services, which not only enables access to millions of 3rd party customers but also powers Microsoft's own AI scenarios from Windows, Office, to Teams.

Huang helped Microsoft and Azure AI achieve multiple industry's first human parity milestones on the following open research tasks: transcribing conversational speech, machine translation, conversational QnA, and computer vision image captioning.

Huang has made significant contributions to the software and AI industry through his executive leadership and his scientific publications, owning more than 170 US patents and impacting billions through Azure AI enabled products and services. In 2016, Wired magazine named him one of ''25 Geniuses''. In 2021, Azure AI was named the winner of InfoWorld's ''Technology of the Year Award''.

Huang was awarded the Allen Newell research excellence medal in 1992, and IEEE Speech Processing Best Paper in 1993. He was recognized as an IEEE Fellow by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2000, and named ACM Fellow by Association for Computing Machinery in 2017. Huang received 2022 Asian American Corporate Leadership Award, and IEEE Amar Bose Industrial Leader Award for “contributions in speech recognition and industrial leadership in artificial intelligence.”

Customer story of Azure AI

* ''Aberdeen City Council'' in Scotland answers calls for customer service
* ''Airbus'' accelerated innovation
* Automation Anywhere uses Azure AI to support UK healthcare provider’s COVID-19 response
* ''BBC'' reads its articles and enables "Beeb" assistant
* CDC launches coronavirus bot to help take strain off healthcare system
* Dentsu Aegis Network uses Azure AI to support global clients like General Motors, P&G and Kraft Heinz
* EU brings the parliament closer to citizens with Azure live speech translation
* GE rapidly converts customers’ paper-based records into digital formats
* KPMG helps financial institutions save millions in compliance costs
* Looney Tunes and BBC all speak with Azure voice
* Motorola Solutions helps first responders using just their voice
* NHS leads innovation with Azure AI
* NYC is fulfilling consistent societal needs
* Progressive insurance shoppers gain new service channel
* RXR Realty reopens for business to fight Covid-19
* Swisscom uses Azure to drive innovation, market leadership with multilingual voice assistant
* TIBCO takes anomaly detection to the edge
* Uber boosts platform security with facial recognition
* University of Nottingham empowers remote research and learning
* Vodafone transformed its customer care strategy
* Volkswagen engages global customers with real-time translation
* Walgreens customer service now on Microsoft Azure AI

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huang, Xuedong
1962 births
Living people
Chinese emigrants to the United States
Fellow Members of the IEEE
Tsinghua University alumni
Carnegie Mellon University faculty
Scientists from Hunan
Alumni of the University of Edinburgh
Microsoft employees
Chinese computer scientists
Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery
Speech processing researchers
Hunan University alumni
American computer scientists
Natural language processing researchers
Computer scientists