PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Mike Schuster

Mike Schuster is a machine learning researcher whose work spans recurrent neural networks, speech recognition and machine translation. He earned an electrical-engineering degree in 1993, proposed bidirectional recurrent neural networks with Kuldip K. Paliwal, developed Japanese and Korean speech models, and coauthored TensorFlow and Google's Neural Machine Translation. After joining Two Sigma in 2018 to lead its AI work, he shared the 2021 IEEE Signal Processing Society Sustained Impact Paper Award for the recurrent-network paper. In January 2026, he is Head of AI Core at Two Sigma and discusses the use of neural networks, reinforcement learning and large language models in investment management.

Now at
Two Sigma
Badges

Timeline

  1. 1993–2006

    Degree and recurrent networks

    He earns an electrical-engineering degree from Gerhard-Mercator University in Duisburg in 1993 and a PhD at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology. With Kuldip K. Paliwal, he proposes a bidirectional recurrent neural network in 1997. Before he joins Google's speech group in early 2006, he works in speech and machine learning at Advanced Telecommunications Research Laboratories in Kyoto, Nuance in the United States, and NTT in Japan.

  2. 2006–2012

    Google speech and voice search

    At Google, he is the main developer of the original Japanese and Korean speech recognition models. In 2012, he and Kaisuke Nakajima publish a paper about Android voice-search systems for those languages.

  3. 2015

    Contributing to TensorFlow

    In 2015, he coauthors Google's TensorFlow report, which describes a machine-learning interface that runs on mobile devices and large distributed systems. The team releases the TensorFlow API and reference implementation under Apache 2.0 in November 2015.

  4. September 2016

    Google Neural Machine Translation

    On September 27, 2016, he and Quoc V. Le announce Google's Neural Machine Translation system as Google Brain research scientists. Human side-by-side evaluations report an average 60% reduction in translation errors compared with Google's phrase-based production system.

  5. November 2016

    Zero-shot multilingual translation

    In November 2016, he posts Google Brain's account of a multilingual neural machine translation system. The model learns to translate between language pairs it has never seen explicitly during training, demonstrating zero-shot translation.

  6. 2018

    Leading Two Sigma's AI team

    He joins Two Sigma in 2018 after working on Google's Brain team. He leads a new team that brings the firm's machine-learning and deep-learning work together.

  7. 2021

    A sustained impact paper award

    In 2021, the IEEE Signal Processing Society awards him and Kuldip K. Paliwal its Sustained Impact Paper Award for their 1997 bidirectional recurrent neural networks paper.

  8. February 2025–January 2026

    Head of AI Core

    In February 2025, he is Head of the AI Core Team at Two Sigma and discusses human expertise in LLM integration. In January 2026, he is Head of AI Core and expects more financial firms to use neural networks, reinforcement learning and LLMs.

Career

  1. 2018–2026Two SigmaAI Team Lead, Head of AI Core
  2. From 2016Google BrainResearch Scientist
  3. Until 2006Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International
  4. Until 2006Nuance Communications
  5. Until 2006NTT
  6. From 2006Google

Education

  1. 1993Gerhard Mercator UniversityElectrical-engineering degree
  2. Nara Institute of Science and TechnologyPhD

From the biography.

  1. Google had the most people shaping AI every year from 2014 to 2025Includes Google. Our estimates of which organizations employed the most people shaping AI each year from 1955 to 2025, tracing the shift from university labs to companies.
  2. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes Google. 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.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Google. 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.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Google. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

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

Sources and credits

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

  1. Research @ Google ISR - Speakers sites.google.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Two Sigma’s Mike Schuster Wins IEEE SPS Sustained Impact Paper Award twosigma.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Excellent Papers for 2012 research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. TensorFlow: Large-Scale Machine Learning on Heterogeneous Distributed Systems research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. A Neural Network for Machine Translation, at Production Scale research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. Google's Neural Machine Translation System: Bridging the Gap between Human and Machine Translation research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Google's Neural Machine Translation System: Bridging the Gap between Human and Machine Translation arxiv.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. Google's Multilingual Neural Machine Translation System: Enabling Zero-Shot Translation research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Zero-Shot Translation with Google’s Multilingual Neural Machine Translation System research.google. Checked 21 October 2026.
  10. Bloomberg: Two Sigma Hires Google Scientist Mike Schuster for AI Expansion twosigma.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  11. AI Core Team Lead Mike Schuster on How to Get the Most From LLMs twosigma.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  12. AI in Investment Management: 2026 Outlook (Part II) twosigma.com. Checked 21 October 2026.