August 18, 2025, Interspeech 2025 was held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Professor Kai Yu, co-founder and Chief Scientist of AISpeech, a distinguished professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, has been officially awarded the title of ISCA Fellow. Established by the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA), this award aims to recognize members who have made outstanding contributions to the science and technology of speech communication. Professor Yu is the first recipient from mainland China since the award was established in 2007.
The selection for ISCA Fellow is highly rigorous, with the number of new Fellows each year not exceeding 0.3% of the total ISCA membership for that year. A total of 8 scholars were selected in 2025, including three Chinese scholars. Professor Yu was recognized specifically for his significant contributions to speech recognition, spoken dialogue systems, and the real-world deployment of spoken language technology.
With over 200 published papers in international journals and conferences, Professor Yu has received numerous best paper awards and led teams to victory in international research evaluations. He was also conferred the Wu Wenjun AI Scientific Progress Award from the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI) and the Green Bamboo Award from China Computer Federation (CCF).
Beyond academia, Professor Yu is a key driver in promoting the application of cutting-edge technologies in industrial sectors. In AISpeech, he led the team to launch the "1+N" reliable distributed agent system, recognizing its own knowledge boundaries, ensuring the reliability of understanding and decision-making. Through technologies like modular disassembly, hot-swapping of different models/agents, and targeted updates, it enables flexible scheduling and efficient collaboration across multiple vertical-domain models, offering advantages in cost, speed, and accuracy over centralized LLMs for applications in smart cars, IoT, and office automation.
Professor Yu is a key promoter of introducing classical AI theories into China. He translated the classic textbook "Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction" by Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton (2024 Turing Award recipients) into Chinese.
Moving forward, Professor Yu and AISpeech will continue to explore the integration of AI speech technology into real-world scenarios, aiming to deliver more natural, convenient, and intelligent interactive experiences.