For pioneering contributions to the theory and practice of automatic speech recognition and statistical spoken dialogue systems. 

A highly respected leader in speech and language processing, the innovations developed by Prof. Steve Young continue to advance the state-of-the art in translating spoken words into text. Prof. Young developed the HTK Toolkit for hidden Markov model-based speech recognition, which has become indispensable software in research laboratories worldwide and has served as the basis for training many commercial speech recognition systems. Techniques including decision-tree state clustering and parallel model combination have enabled speech recognition systems that are more robust to additive and convolutional noise. Prof. Young’s research in applying statistical techniques to spoken dialogue systems aims to revolutionize the development of systems that integrate natural conversational speech interactions between users and information systems such as in call centers, mobile devices, and other applications.

An IEEE Fellow, Prof. Young is a professor with the University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, U.K.

One of the first statistical signal-processing researchers to envision the explosive growth of wireless communications and its resulting signal-processing needs, Georgios B. Giannakis has profoundly impacted the field with many groundbreaking contributions. He was the first to devise a multicarrier communication scheme that was resilient to frequency-selective multiuser and inter-symbol interference. This established blocking as the third important dimension for improving communication performance without altering power or bandwidth. His work on space-time coding for multiple-antenna wireless communications has demonstrated the practicality of multiple-antenna signal processing. Prof. Giannakis also helped pioneer ultra-wideband communications, educating industry and academia on the emerging technology that altered the wireless landscape for performing short-range communications such as in local-area networks.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Giannakis is currently an Endowed Chair Professor and director of the Digital Technology Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.