Xuedong David Huang (born October 20, 1962) is a Chinese American computer scientist and technology executive who has made contributions to spoken language processing and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

, including Azure AI Services. He is Zoom's chief technology officer after serving as Microsoft's Technical Fellow and Azure AI Chief Technology Officer for 30 years. Huang is a strong advocate of AI for Accessibility, and AI for Cultural Heritage.

Education

Huang received his PhD from

the University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...

in 1989 (sponsored by the British

ORS Ors () is a commune in the Nord department in northern France. It is located on the Sambre–Oise Canal, in a small wood called Bois l'Évêque. History The commune was an area of intense fighting in November 1918 for control of the canal. ...

and Edinburgh University Scholarship), his MS from

Tsinghua University Tsinghua University (THU) is a public university in Haidian, Beijing, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Constructio ...

in 1984, and BS from

Hunan University Hunan University (HNU; ) is a national public university in Yuelu, Changsha, Hunan, China. It is affiliated with and funded by the Ministry of Education. The university is part of Project 211, Project 985, and the Double First-Class Construction ...

in 1982.

Career

After receiving his PhD in 1989, Huang joined

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

and worked with

Raj Reddy Dabbala Rajagopal "Raj" Reddy (born 13 June 1937) is an Indian-American computer scientist and a winner of the Turing Award. He is one of the early pioneers of artificial intelligence and has served on the faculty of Stanford and Carnegie Mel ...

and

Kai-Fu Lee Kai-Fu Lee (; born December 3, 1961) is a Taiwanese businessman, computer scientist, investor, and writer. He is currently based in Beijing, China. Lee has worked as an executive, first at Apple, then SGI, Microsoft, and Google. He became the ...

speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers. It is also ...

. At CMU, he directed the Sphinx-II speech system research which achieved the best performance in every category of

DARPA The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of emerging technologies for use by the military. Originally known as the Adva ...

's 1992 benchmarking.

Microsoft Research Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

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 three decades, Huang has been instrumental in creating Microsoft's

Speech Application Programming Interface The Speech Application Programming Interface or SAPI is an API developed by Microsoft to allow the use of speech recognition and speech synthesis within Windows applications. To date, a number of versions of the API have been released, which ha ...

(SAPI), shipping

Microsoft Speech Server The Microsoft Speech Server is a product from Microsoft designed to allow the authoring and deployment of IVR applications incorporating Speech Recognition, Speech Synthesis and DTMF. The first version of the server was released in 2004 as Micro ...

, and modernizing spoken language and integrative AI services via Azure AI, which not only enables millions of 3rd party customers but also powers up Microsoft's

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Office An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform Business administration, administrative Work (human activity), work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a po ...

Teams A team is a group of individuals (human or non-human) working together to achieve their goal. As defined by Professor Leigh Thompson (academic), Leigh Thompson of the Kellogg School of Management, " team is a group of people who are interd ...

, and Azure OpenAI Services. Huang helped Microsoft and Azure Cognitive Services 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 Wired may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * ''Wired'' (Jeff Beck album), 1976 * ''Wired'' (Hugh Cornwell album), 1993 * ''Wired'' (Mallory Knox album), 2017 * "Wired", a song by Prism from their album '' Beat Street'' * "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 Allen Newell (March 19, 1927 – July 19, 1992) was an American researcher in computer science and cognitive psychology at the RAND Corporation and at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, Tepper School of Business, and D ...

research excellence medal in 1992, and IEEE Speech Processing Best Paper in 1993. He was recognized as an

IEEE Fellow , the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and ot ...

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an American 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE has a corporate office ...

in 2000, named

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

Association for Computing Machinery The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) is a US-based international learned society for computing. It was founded in 1947 and is the world's largest scientific and educational computing society. The ACM is a non-profit professional membe ...

in 2017, and a member of

Washington State Washington, officially the State of Washington, is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is often referred to as Washington State to distinguish it from the national capital, both named after George Washington ...

Academy of Sciences. Huang received 2022 Asian American Corporate Leadership Award, and IEEE Amar Bose Industrial Leader Award. In 2023, he was elected a member of the US

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American Nonprofit organization, nonprofit, NGO, non-governmental organization. It is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), along with the National Academ ...

(NAE), and a member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

.New Members Elected in 2023: American Academy of Arts and Sciences
April 19, 2023 Huang joined Zoom at June, 2023 as CTO.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Huang, Xuedong 1962 births Living people Chinese emigrants to the United States Fellows of the IEEE Tsinghua University alumni Carnegie Mellon University faculty Scientists from Hunan Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Microsoft employees Chinese computer scientists 2016 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Speech processing researchers Hunan University alumni American computer scientists Natural language processing researchers