Ushering in a new era of computing

As a graduate student doing his master's thesis on speech recognition at the MIT AI Lab (now the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), Dan Huttenlocher worked closely with Professor Victor Zue. Well known for pioneering the development of systems that enable an user to interact with computers using spoken language, Zue traveled frequently to Asia -- where much of the early research in speech recognition happened during the 1980s. Huttenlocher occasionally accompanied his professor on these trips, many of which involved interactions with members of MIT Industrial Liaison Program, as he recalls. "It was a tremendous opportunity," according to Huttenlocher, "and it was a large part of what built my interest in engaging with companies and industry in addition to the academic side of research." Huttenlocher went on to earn his PhD in computer vision at the Institute and has since embarked on a career that encompasses academia, industry, and the philanthropic sector.