IIT Bombay | India
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🌱 Early Academic Pursuits
Mr. Rishabh Kumar’s journey in the field of Computer Science and Engineering began with academic brilliance and passion for innovation. He completed his Bachelor of Technology at IIT (ISM) Dhanbad in 2016, where he laid the foundation for his interest in language technologies under the mentorship of Prof. Sukomal Pal. His intellectual trajectory reached new heights when he joined IIT Bombay as a PhD scholar in 2019. There, under the guidance of Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan and Prof. Preethi Jyothi, he began pioneering work in Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) for low-resource Indian languages, including Sanskrit and Hindi — an effort that merges linguistics with machine learning in service of cultural preservation and accessibility.
👨💼 Professional Endeavors
With roles spanning startups to tech giants, Mr. Kumar has applied his research to real-world systems. At Samsung R&D, Bangalore, during his 2023–2024 internship, he developed advanced ASR models for Hindi and spearheaded cross-lingual proper noun recognition using Large Language Models (LLMs). His early stints as Technical Head at Gartley618 Technologies and Lead Developer at Pocketin demonstrate his versatility across full-stack development, iOS applications, and blockchain-based platforms. Additionally, his research internship at Wrig Nanosystems involved Android-based biomedical device integration, showcasing his interdisciplinary reach.
🧠 Contributions and Research Focus
Mr. Kumar’s work is particularly focused on ASR for underrepresented languages, speech-text alignment, and LLM-based improvements in speech technologies. His innovations include:
🔹 Developing Vāgyojaka, a Sanskrit ASR annotation and post-editing tool
🔹 Creating a SpeechQC Agent, a natural language–driven framework for speech dataset validation
🔹 Building ASR pipelines for Indian Parliament (SansadTV)
🔹 Advancing BharatGen Hindi ASR systems
His contributions are documented across top-tier conferences and journals, including ACL, EMNLP, INTERSPEECH, and CSL, with several first-author papers that blend linguistic knowledge and computational innovation.
🏆 Accolades and Recognition
Mr. Kumar’s excellence has been widely recognized. He received the Microsoft Research India Travel Grant to attend INTERSPEECH 2022 and has won prestigious competitions like the State Android App Contest by Jharkhand Government and the National Multilingual Theater Competition. His early achievements include multiple Math Olympiad prizes, an NTSE Level II qualification, and distinctions in Macmillan Olympiads by the University of New South Wales. These accolades reflect his lifelong dedication to problem-solving, innovation, and excellence.
🌍 Impact and Influence
Rishabh Kumar’s research has directly impacted India’s speech technology ecosystem, contributing essential tools and models for building inclusive, vernacular AI systems. His work supports broader national initiatives such as Bhashini and aligns with global goals of linguistic equity in AI. By building publicly usable ASR tools, datasets, and systems for resource-poor languages, he is democratizing access to technology for millions of Indian users.
🔭 Legacy and Future Contributions
As Mr. Kumar approaches the culmination of his PhD, his trajectory signals an exciting future. His legacy lies in fusing computational prowess with cultural sensitivity — bringing Indian linguistic diversity to the forefront of AI innovation. Whether in academia, industry, or open-source collaborations, he is poised to continue shaping the next generation of multilingual ASR systems, LLM-based speech understanding, and resource-efficient AI tools. His work will inspire young researchers to explore the intersection of language, society, and technology.
Publications
📝 Linguistically Informed Automatic Speech Recognition in Sanskrit
Author: Rishabh Kumar (assumed from your context)
Journal: Computer Speech & Language (CSL)
Year: 2025
📝 Beyond Common Words: Enhancing ASR Cross-Lingual Proper Noun Recognition Using LLMs
Author: Rishabh Kumar (assumed)
Conference: EMNLP (Findings of the 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing)
Year: 2024
📝 Linguistically Informed Post-processing for ASR Error Correction in Sanskrit
Author: Rishabh Kumar
Conference: INTERSPEECH
Year: 2022
📝 Vāgyojaka: An Annotating and A Post-Editing Tool for Automatic Speech Recognition
Author: Rishabh Kumar
Conference: INTERSPEECH (Show and Tell)
Year: 2022
📝 Automatic Speech Recognition in Sanskrit: A New Speech Corpus and Modelling Insights
Author: Rishabh Kumar
Conference: ACL (Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics)
Year: 2021