PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hema Murthy

Also known as Hema A. Murthy, Hema Arunachalam Murthy

Hema Murthy is a computer scientist who builds speech technology for Indian languages, from continuous speech recognition to text-to-speech synthesis. After degrees from Osmania University and McMaster University, she joined IIT Madras as a lecturer in 1988 and earned her PhD there in 1992. Her study of the speech phase spectrum through group delay functions produced the Modified Group Delay Feature, and her group's Indian-language synthesizers were built into screen readers for visually impaired users. The Indian National Academy of Engineering elected her a Fellow in 2017, and the International Speech Communication Association named her a Fellow in 2022. She retired from IIT Madras in 2023; she is now a Distinguished Professor at Shiv Nadar University Chennai and leads a consortium of 23 institutions on speech technologies in Indian languages.

Timeline

  1. 1980–1986

    Osmania and McMaster degrees

    Born in 1958, she earns a bachelor's degree in electronics and communication engineering at Osmania University in Hyderabad in 1980. She completes a master's in electrical and computer engineering at McMaster University in Canada in 1986, where she classifies ice-radar images.

  2. 1986–2004

    The modified group delay feature

    Back in India in 1986, she turns to speech signals and extracts features from the phase spectrum using group delay functions, work that leads to the Modified Group Delay Feature (MODGDF) for speaker recognition and spoof detection. In 2004, she, Rajesh Hegde and Venkata Ramana Rao Gadde combine MODGDF with MFCC features to recognize continuous speech in Tamil and Telugu.

  3. 1988–2006

    Lecturer to professor at IIT Madras

    She joins the IIT Madras faculty as a lecturer in 1988 and earns her PhD in computer science and engineering there in 1992. In 2006, she becomes a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and receives an IBM Faculty Award.

  4. 1995–1996

    Postdoctoral work at SRI

    From 1995 to 1996, she is a postdoctoral researcher at SRI, where she works on making the Decipher front end robust and gains a firm grip on classical machine learning for speech. She returns to SRI for three months in 2002.

  5. 2012–2017

    Text-to-speech for Indian languages

    From 2012 to 2017, she and Anil K. Sao of IIT Mandi are principal investigators of an INR 12.66 crore project to develop text-to-speech systems in Indian languages. Her group's Indian-language speech synthesizers, built into screen readers for visually impaired users, win a GE innovation award and first prize at the Shaastra research expo in 2013.

  6. 2017–2024

    INAE and ISCA fellowships

    She is elected a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering in 2017, serves on the ISCA board from 2017 to 2021, and chairs the technical program of INTERSPEECH 2018. The International Speech Communication Association names her a Fellow in 2022. She becomes a Fellow of the Asia Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association in 2023 and joins the ISCA Advisory Council in 2024.

  7. 2020–2022

    Decoding speech from EEG

    In 2020, her group works on brain-computer interfaces for people with speech and motor impairments, with the goal of inverting EEG signals to speech. Rini A. Sharon completes a PhD on neural decoding of speech-equivalents from scalp-recorded EEG under her and Umesh S in 2022.

  8. As of October 2026

    Distinguished professor in Chennai

    She retires from IIT Madras in 2023 and holds an honorary emeritus professorship there from 2023 to 2026. She is a Distinguished Professor at Shiv Nadar University Chennai and leads a consortium of 23 institutions on speech technologies in Indian languages under the National Language Translation Mission (Bhashini). Her current research aims to shrink the footprint of machine learning algorithms during training and inference.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI from 1961 to 2025, with a year-by-year chart.
  2. The United States employs an estimated 53% of people in our data with a known employment countryOur estimates of where AI careers are concentrated now and how countries’ shares of dated positions changed over time.
  3. 46% of living people in our data with known birth and employment countries work outside their birth countryOur estimate of cross-border careers in AI, from country of birth and the country of each current organization.
  4. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionOur estimates of where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led, from education records in cited biographies.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hema Murthy yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Series to Highlight Women in Signal Processing: Dr. Hema A. Murthy | IEEE Signal Processing Society signalprocessingsociety.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  2. Hema's Home Page cse.iitm.ac.in. Checked 19 October 2026.
  3. Expert Profile View - Indian National Academy of Engineering inae.in. Checked 19 October 2026.
  4. ISCA Archive - Continuous speech recognition using joint features derived from the modified group delay function and MFCC isca-archive.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  5. ACM-W India Grad Cohort event.india.acm.org. Checked 19 October 2026.
  6. Development of text to speech systems in Indian language | India Science, Technology & Innovation - ISTI Portal indiascienceandtechnology.gov.in. Checked 19 October 2026.
  7. WMB&SPI - Team sites.google.com. Checked 19 October 2026.
  8. ISCA - ISCA Fellow Program isca-speech.org. Checked 19 October 2026.