PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Bhiksha Raj

Bhiksha Raj is a professor at Carnegie Mellon whose AI research spans speech recognition, machine learning, and privacy-preserving speech processing. As a CMU doctoral student in 1996, he worked on noise-robust recognition and earned his PhD in electrical and computer engineering in 2000, after earlier study at Osmania University and the Indian Institute of Technology. He joined the university's faculty in 2009, became chief architect of Sphinx-4, and was named an IEEE Fellow in 2017 and an ISCA Fellow in 2024. In July 2025, he coauthored a label-free method for estimating speech recognition error rates; as of October 2026, he is a professor in the Language Technologies Institute.

Works
470
Citations
12,958
h-index
47
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1996–2000

    Robust speech recognition

    In March 1996, he is a Carnegie Mellon PhD student working on algorithms for noise-robust automatic speech recognition. He completes a PhD in electrical and computer engineering there in 2000, after a bachelor's degree from Osmania University and a master's from the Indian Institute of Technology, both in electronics and communications.

  2. 2005

    Missing-feature methods

    In 2005, he and Richard M. Stern publish “Missing Feature Methods for Robust Automatic Speech Recognition” in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.

  3. 2009–2014

    Joining Carnegie Mellon

    In 2009, he joins the Carnegie Mellon faculty after spending time at Compaq Cambridge Research Labs and Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs. From 2009 to 2014, he conducts an annual winter school for undergraduate students in India.

  4. By 2016

    The Sphinx-4 system

    By 2016, he is the chief architect of the popular Sphinx-4 speech-recognition system.

  5. 2017

    An IEEE fellowship

    In 2017, he becomes an IEEE Fellow for contributions to speech recognition.

  6. 2024

    An ISCA fellowship

    In 2024, ISCA elects him a Fellow for contributions to robust speech recognition and other areas in speech and audio processing.

  7. July 2025

    Label-free ASR metrics

    In July 2025, he coauthors a label-free method that uses multimodal speech and transcription embeddings to estimate Word Error Rate and Character Error Rate.

  8. As of October 2026

    Professor at Carnegie Mellon

    As of October 2026, he is a professor at Carnegie Mellon's Language Technologies Institute. His research spans machine learning, speech processing, computer vision, time-series analysis, privacy-preserving machine learning, and neural network architectures.

Career

  1. Since 2009Carnegie Mellon UniversityProfessor
  2. 2022–2025Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence
  3. 2011–2014Institute for Systems Engineering and Computers
  4. 2003–2009Mitsubishi Electric
  5. 2002–2009Mitsubishi Group

Education

  1. 2000Carnegie Mellon UniversityPhD
  2. Osmania UniversityBachelor's degree
  3. Indian Institute of TechnologyMaster's degree

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

Most-cited works

  1. SphereFace: Deep Hypersphere Embedding for Face Recognition2017 · IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition · 3,118 citations
  2. Sphinx-4: a flexible open source framework for speech recognition2004 · 417 citationsWith Rita Singh
  3. The reverb challenge: A common evaluation framework for dereverberation and recognition of reverberant speech2013 · IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and Acoustics (WASPAA) · 383 citations
  4. A summary of the REVERB challenge: state-of-the-art and remaining challenges in reverberant speech processing research2016 · EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing · 357 citations
  5. DCASE 2017 Challenge setup: Tasks, datasets and baseline system2017 · 326 citations

From OpenAlex, as of 18 October 2026.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. Our estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. Our estimates of combined and median h-index at AI organizations, using current affiliations and OpenAlex records.
  3. The median h-index is 54 at universities and 20 at frontier AI labsIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. The median h-index is 54 at universities and 20 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, citations and moves to estimate how universities and frontier labs contribute to AI research.
  4. Stanford University trained or employed 27 of the 111 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes Carnegie Mellon University. Stanford University trained or employed 27 of the 111 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and employment links for major-prize and best-paper winners.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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  1. Personal Info cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  2. Bhiksha Raj Named IEEE Fellow cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  3. Publications cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.
  4. ISCA - ISCA Fellows 2024 isca-speech.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  5. On the Robust Approximation of ASR Metrics - ACL Anthology aclanthology.org. Checked 18 October 2026.
  6. Bhiksha Raj - Language Technologies Institute - School of Computer Science - Carnegie Mellon University lti.cs.cmu.edu. Checked 18 October 2026.