Geza Nemeth

While studying at the Budapest University of Technology (BME) Faculty of Electrical Engineering (VIK) Broadcasting Department, Pál Ferenczi, professor of radio/TV technology, gave a decisive engineering perspective. He was among the last to speak under Károly Simonyi. From his second year, he began to deal with speech technology under the supervision of Géza Gordos. He prepared his diploma project at the Posta Experimental Institute (PKI) under the supervision of György Takács: the then-operating VOXALARM prototype was used to alert people via telephone lines with speech synthesis in the event of burglary, fire, etc.

He won first prize in the diploma project competition of the Hungarian Association of Information and Communication Sciences (HTE). This was the beginning of his research collaboration with Gábor Olaszy in the field of speech synthesis. In 1985, he defended his engineering diploma project in digital signal processing by creating an automatic formant tracking algorithm.

From 1985, for two years, as a development engineer at the Budapest Electroacoustic Factory (BEAG), he carried out the production of Hungarovox and Russon speech synthesizers, and participated in the development of speech recognition under the leadership of Klára Vicsi.

In 1987, he obtained his doctorate and became an assistant professor at the Institute of Telecommunications and Electronics (HEI) of the BME in the research group led by Géza Gordos. One of his first works was the development of a talking clock (which can be clearly heard on the audio recording of János Kádár's last speech). In 1990, he was one of the developers of the number change announcement system produced by Hungarocom Kft. – in Hungarian, English, German and Russian.

In the 1990s, he and his colleagues created the MULTIVOX speech synthesizer family for more than ten languages within the framework of domestic and EU-funded projects. He obtained his PhD degree in 1997. In 1999, the electronic mail reading system (MAILMONDÓ) developed under his supervision was put into operation in the MATÁV network. That year, he received a shared Academic Award. In 2000, the first version of the ProfiVox system was completed, which is the most widely used PC reading system for visually impaired people in Hungary. He initiated and led the development of several other systems supporting disabled people. In recognition of this, together with Géza Gordos and Gábor Olaszy, he was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2004.

In 2003, they were the first in the world to develop a smartphone SMS reading system (SMSMondó and SMSRapper) for Westel in collaboration with MIT Systems Kft. Since then, they have been an internationally influential figure in the development of many other speech information systems. The latest result of their research group is the ProfiVox-Korpusz system, which helps with voice passenger information at MÁV stations.

Associate professor at the Department of Telecommunications and Media Informatics (HEI) of BME, habilitated in 2013; university professor from 2023. Head of the department's SmartLab; this laboratory is a professional workshop for speech technology and intelligent interactions. In 2011, he and his co-authors received the Academic Level Award for the book Hungarian Speech. A school-making personality. Since 2019, he has been the Hungarian National Contact Point (NCP) of the EU Artificial Intelligence Platform (www.ai4eu.eu), and the head of the international relations working group of the Hungarian Artificial Intelligence Coalition.

Awards: Kempelen Farkas Award (HTE – NJSZT - Optical, Acoustic and Film Technology Association, 1995, 2000); Academic Award (shared, 1999); Officer's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary (shared, 2004); László Kozma Memorial Medal (BME VIK, 2008); Academic Level Award (shared, 2011); Master Teacher (National Council of Scientific Students, OTDT, 2013).