Professor of Machine Learning and Speech Processing
Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark
He is a Full Professor of Machine Learning and Speech Processing, a Co-Head of the Centre for Acoustic Signal Processing Research (CASPR), the Machine Learning Research Group Leader in the Department of Electronic Systems, and the Head of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) Doctoral Programme at Aalborg University, Denmark. He is a Co-Lead of Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Denmark.
He was a Visiting Scientist/Professor at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA (in 2022, 2017 and 2012), an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronic Engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and a postdoctoral fellow at AI Spoken Language Lab, in the Department of Computer Science at KAIST, Korea.
He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Hunan University, China, in 1990 and 1996, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 1999.
His research interests include machine learning, deep learning, self-supervised learning, pattern recognition, speech and speaker recognition, noise-robust speech processing, multimodal signal processing, and social robotics (developed interactive iSocioBot). He has over 250 referred journal and conference publications. His works have been recognized by the prestigious IEEE Signal Processing Society 2022 Best Paper Award and International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) 2022 Best Research Paper Award.
His teaching has been focusing on machine learning and AI. He established and teaches the Machine Learning PhD course (2007-now), the Deep Learning PhD course (2015-now), the Self-Supervised Learning PhD course (2024), the Machine Learning Master course (2009-now), and the Deep Learning Master course (2023-now), all at Aalborg University. He also teaches Reinforcement Learning and Self-Supervised Learning PhD courses. He established and taught the Introduction to AI course to Bachelor students in 1999 at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.
He has served as an Editorial Board Member/Associate Editor for several journals including IEEE/ACM TRANSACTIONS ON AUDIO, SPEECH AND LANGUAGE PROCESSING, Computer Speech and Language, and Digital Signal Processing. He is a Lead Editor for IEEE Journal of STSP Inaugural Special Series on AI in Signal & Data Science – Toward Explainable, Reliable, and Sustainable Machine Learning and for IEEE J-STSP Special Series on AI in Signal & Data Science – Toward Large Language Model Theory and Applications. He was a Lead Guest Editor of the IEEE Journal of STSP and a Guest Editor of several journals including Neurocomputing.
He is a Member of IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee from 2024 and a member of the IEEE SPS Conferences Board from 2022. He was the elected Chair of the IEEE Machine Learning for Signal Processing Technical Committee (MLSP TC) from 2021-2022 and a Member of IEEE MLSP TC from 2018-2023. He was a member of the IEEE SPS Technical Directions Board from 2021-2022.
He was a TPC Vice-Chair for the 49th IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP-2024) 2024, Seoul, Korea, and a Publicity Co-Chair of the Inaugural IEEE Conference on Artificial Intelligence (CAI) 2023, Santa Clara, California. He was the General Chair of IEEE 28th International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP 2018), Aalborg, Denmark, and was a Program Co-Chair for IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology (SLT 2016), San Diego, California, USA. He has served as a Chair, Program Co-chair, Area and Session Chair, and Tutorial Speaker of many international conferences. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Member of ISCA, and a Member of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS).