PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jean-François Bonastre

Jean-François Bonastre is a speech researcher whose work focuses on speaker recognition, voice security and speech privacy. He completed a computer science doctorate at Avignon in 1994 and coauthored ALIZE 3.0, an open-source toolkit for speaker recognition. He studied transformed-voice attacks, directed LIA, served as ISCA president and became an ISCA Fellow. From 2022 to 2025, he coauthored the VoicePrivacy Challenge Evaluation Plan and worked as research director at Inria Défense & Sécurité; since October 2025, he is research director at AMIAD and an associate professor at Avignon Université.

Now at
Ministerial Agency for Defense AI and Avignon University
Badges

Timeline

  1. 1994

    A PhD in speaker recognition

    He earns a computer science doctorate at Avignon University in 1994, with a thesis on speaker characterization and recognition.

  2. 2007

    Voice transformation and false acceptance

    In 2007, he coauthors a study showing that voice transformation can increase false acceptance in automatic speaker-recognition systems.

  3. 2011–2013

    President of ISCA

    He serves as president of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) from 2011 to 2013.

  4. 2013

    ALIZE 3.0

    In 2013, he coauthors ALIZE 3.0, an open-source platform for speaker recognition. The toolkit uses Gaussian mixture modelling and includes joint factor analysis and i-vector methods.

  5. 2016–2020

    Director of LIA

    From March 2016 to March 2020, he directs LIA (Laboratoire Informatique d’Avignon) at Avignon Université.

  6. 2021

    An ISCA fellowship

    In 2021, he becomes an ISCA Fellow.

  7. 2022–2025

    VoicePrivacy and defence AI

    He coauthors The VoicePrivacy 2022 Challenge Evaluation Plan, which defines a voice-anonymization task that hides speaker identity while protecting linguistic content and naturalness. From October 2022 to September 2025, he serves as research director at Inria Défense & Sécurité.

  8. Since October 2025

    Research director at AMIAD

    In October 2025, he becomes research director at the Agence Ministérielle pour l’IA de Défense (AMIAD). He is also an associate professor at Avignon Université and an associate member of LIA.

Career

  1. Since 2025Ministerial Agency for Defense AIResearch Director
  2. Since 2016Avignon UniversityDirector, Associate Professor
  3. 2022–2025InriaResearch Director

Education

  1. 1994Avignon UniversityDoctorate

From the biography.

  1. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes Inria. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes Inria. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Inria. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.
  4. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes Inria. Our estimates of the organizations where 550 people worked directly before joining 9 frontier AI labs across 620 career transitions, comparing the main feeder organizations per lab.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Jean-François Bonastre yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. CV HAL - Jean-François Bonastre cv.hal.science. Checked 20 October 2026.
  2. ISCA Archive - Artificial impostor voice transformation effects on false acceptance rates isca-archive.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  3. ISCA Archive - ALIZE 3.0 — open source toolkit for state-of-the-art speaker recognition isca-archive.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  4. ALIZE 3.0 - Open-source platform for speaker recognition signalprocessingsociety.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  5. [2203.12468] The VoicePrivacy 2022 Challenge Evaluation Plan arxiv.org. Checked 20 October 2026.
  6. Conseil scientifique - CRIM crim.ca. Checked 20 October 2026.