Uniphore appoints Roberto Pieraccini as Chief Scientist

Uniphore, the Chennai and California-based conversational automation startup, today announced the appointment of Roberto Pieraccini as Chief Scientist. Pieraccini, an expert in spoken human-machine interaction, has over four decades of experience in ASR (automatic speech recognition), dialogue, NLU (natural language understanding), and most recently, working on LLMs (large language models).

"Roberto's deep experience in enabling how humans and machines communicate naturally and his passion for innovation make him a perfect fit for Uniphore," said Balaji Raghavan, CTO, Uniphore. "I am excited to welcome Roberto to Uniphore as we position ourselves for our next phase of growth, leveraging enterprise LLMs and bringing the latest advancements in AI to prospects and partners."

Pieraccini joins Uniphore from Google where he spent the last five years. Most recently, he served as Director of Engineering for Google Assistant, driving the development of LLM (LaMDA)-based solutions for NLU and Dialog. At Google, he also worked on a portfolio of NLU technologies such as conversational NLU, Assistant's Personality, NLU internationalisation, and general NLU quality.

Prior to Google, Pieraccini held leadership, research, and academic positions at various organisations, including Jibo, California College of the Arts, International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), SpeechCycle, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, SpeechWorks, and AT&T Bell Labs. He is the author and co-author of various patents, books, and numerous publications in his field of expertise.

"Uniphore is a true pioneer in the field of conversational AI and I am thrilled to be part of its journey," said Roberto Pieraccini, Chief Scientist, Uniphore. "We are at an inflection point today where AI can revolutionize human-machine interactions at an unprecedented pace. I look forward to collaborating with the leadership team and the talented engineering and product teams to drive the next phase of Uniphore's transformational technology."