[Techtaffy Newsdesk]

The International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), an independent center for advanced computer science research associated with the University of California at Berkeley, has appointed Roberto Pieraccini as its new director.

Mr. Pieraccini succeeds Professor Nelson Morgan, who served as director for 13 years and helped found ICSI’s Computer Speech Group in 1988. Morgan will now serve as Deputy Director and continue to lead the Speech Group.

Mr. Pieraccini has had an illustrious career in computer science, with a focus on speech and language technology. Before joining ICSI, Pieraccini  was the chief technology officer of SpeechCycle, a company focused on advanced speech and multimodal solutions. Prior to that, he was a research staff member at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research, and before that a director of Research & Development for SpeechWorks.

Mr. Pieraccini served as the chair of IEEE’s Speech and Language Technical Committee and has also worked for AT&T Laboratories and Bell Labs. He started his career as a researcher at CSELT, the research labs for the Italian telephone company in the 1980s.

[Image Courtesy: ICSI]