Reinhold Haeb-Umbach

Also known as Reinhold Häeb-Umbach, Reinhold Häb-Umbach

Reinhold Haeb-Umbach is a communications engineer who works on speech recognition that holds up against noise and reverberation. After a Dipl.-Ing. degree and a dissertation at RWTH Aachen University, he spent many years at Philips Research Laboratories, where he won Innovation Prizes in 1994 and 1997, and worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Centre in the USA before becoming Professor of Communications Engineering at Paderborn University in 2001. ISCA named him a Fellow in 2015 for contributions to improving the robustness of automatic speech recognition, and in October 2015 he published Robust Automatic Speech Recognition: A Bridge to Practical Applications with Jinyu Li, Li Deng and Yifan Gong. He was spokesperson of the DFG research group Acoustic Sensor Networks, became an IEEE Fellow in 2020, served as an ISCA Distinguished Lecturer from 2021 to 2023, and was Technical Program Chair of Interspeech 2024. Paderborn University held a farewell ceremony for him in February 2026, and his research focuses on statistical signal processing and machine learning for speech and audio.

Now at: University of Paderborn
Works: 409
Citations: 8,061
h-index: 40
Badges: Bridge
Loyal

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

1980–1988

Studies and doctorate at Aachen

He is a fellow of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation from 1980 to 1983. RWTH Aachen University honours his Dipl.-Ing. degree with distinction in 1983 and his dissertation with honours in 1988.
1994–1997

Innovation prizes at Philips Research

While at Philips Research Laboratories, he receives an Innovation Prize of Philips Research in 1994 for contributions to Philips' Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition System. In 1997, he receives another for managing the project that brought the first name-dialing functionality to Philips mobile phones.
2001

Professor at Paderborn

In 2001, he becomes Professor of Communications Engineering at Paderborn University, where he heads the Department of Communications Engineering. Before this move, he spends many years at Philips Research Laboratories and works as a postdoctoral researcher at the IBM Almaden Research Centre in the USA.
2015

ISCA Fellow and robust ASR book

The International Speech Communication Association elects him a Fellow in 2015 for contributions to improving the robustness of automatic speech recognition. In October 2015, he publishes Robust Automatic Speech Recognition: A Bridge to Practical Applications with Jinyu Li, Li Deng and Yifan Gong, a book on noise- and reverberation-robust techniques for recognizers built on Gaussian mixture models and deep neural networks.
Since 2016

Acoustic Sensor Networks research group

From 2016, scientists at the universities of Paderborn, Bochum and Erlangen-Nuremberg work in the DFG research group Acoustic Sensor Networks on the next generation of acoustic signal processing, and he serves as its spokesperson. The group's work is meant for uses such as monitoring buildings and smart rooms.
2020–2023

IEEE Fellow and ISCA lecturer

The IEEE names him a Fellow in 2020 for contributions to the robustness of automatic speech recognition. From 2021 to 2023, he is a Distinguished Lecturer of the International Speech Communication Association, whose lecture tours lead in particular to countries still underrepresented in language processing.
2024

Program chair of Interspeech

In 2024, he is Technical Program Chair of Interspeech, held in Kos, Greece, the world's largest conference on speech science and speech technology.
February 2026

A farewell ceremony at Paderborn

In February 2026, Paderborn University holds a farewell ceremony for him, with Institute Director Jens Förstner paying tribute on behalf of the faculty. His research has focused on statistical signal processing and machine learning for speech processing and communication systems, and he has published over 300 scientific papers.