PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Michael Picheny

Michael Picheny is a speech-recognition researcher whose career spans IBM's large-vocabulary systems, telephony and embedded products, and Watson speech services. He earned an Sc.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT in 1981 and joined IBM after his doctorate. At IBM, he contributed to a 1984 real-time recognizer and led the Yorktown Heights Speech team from 2007 until his move to NYU in August 2019. His service includes chairing an IEEE Signal Processing Society committee, serving on ISCA's board, and becoming an ISCA Fellow in 2014. At NYU, he is a Research Professor; in September 2026, he submitted a Whisper-based video-transcription study across seven languages.

Works
228
Citations
7,015
h-index
42
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 1981

    An MIT doctorate and IBM

    In 1981, he earns an Sc.D. in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, then joins IBM's speech-recognition area after his doctorate.

  2. 1984

    IBM's real-time recognizer

    In 1984, he contributes to IBM's first real-time large-vocabulary discrete speech-recognition system.

  3. 1986–2004

    IEEE editorial and committee service

    From 1986 to 1989, he serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing. From 2002 to 2004, he chairs the Speech Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

  4. 1990s

    Telephony and embedded systems

    During the 1990s, his work includes IBM speech-recognition product lines for telephony and embedded systems.

  5. 2005–2014

    ISCA board and fellowship

    From 2005 to 2013, he serves on the board of the International Speech Communication Association. The association names him a Fellow in 2014.

  6. 2007–2019

    Leading IBM's Speech team

    At IBM, he leads the Speech team in Yorktown Heights from 2007 until his move to NYU in August 2019, after 35 years as a manager in IBM's Speech area. In the Watson Group, he is responsible for Speech Services for speech recognition and speech synthesis.

  7. September 2026

    Whisper across seven languages

    In September 2026, he submits a sole-author paper on Whisper-based video transcription across seven languages. The study reports a 30% average transcription error rate, which modest fine-tuning reduces to 20%.

  8. Since August 2019

    Research Professor at NYU

    In August 2019, he joins NYU as a Research Professor in Courant Computer Science and the Center for Data Science. As of October 2026, NYU lists him as a Research Professor in its Computer Science Department.

Career

  1. 2019–2026New York UniversityResearch Professor of Computer Science and Data Science
  2. 1985–1986Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  3. 1981–2019IBMResponsible for Speech Services

Education

  1. 1981Massachusetts Institute of TechnologySc.D.

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

Most-cited works

  1. Speaking Clearly for the Hard of Hearing II1986 · Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 668 citations
  2. Speaker adaptation of neural network acoustic models using i-vectors2013 · IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding (ASRU) · 589 citationsWith David Nahamoo
  3. Speaking Clearly for the Hard of Hearing I1985 · Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research · 462 citations
  4. English Conversational Telephone Speech Recognition by Humans and Machines2017 · Interspeech (USB) · 359 citationsWith Bhuvana Ramabhadran
  5. Deep Belief Networks using discriminative features for phone recognition2011 · IEEE International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing · 290 citationsWith Abdelrahman Mohamed, Bhuvana Ramabhadran, Geoffrey Hinton and Tara Sainath

From OpenAlex, as of 21 October 2026.

  1. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  2. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes New York University. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  3. Companies supply the most prior-work hires at 7 of the 9 frontier AI labsIncludes New York University. 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.
  4. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes New York University. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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  1. NYU Computer Science Department cs.nyu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Michael Picheny's NYU Web Page sites.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. 第124回SLP研究発表会-情報処理学会 ipsj.or.jp. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. Big Ideas in Artificial Intelligence | ai @ NYU cims.nyu.edu. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. Getting to Know Your Fellow Researchers: Michael Picheny | IEEE Signal Processing Society signalprocessingsociety.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. [2609.11772] Whisper-Based Speech Transcription from Videos Across Multiple Languages for Cross-Cultural Understanding arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.