A pioneer in neural network speech recognition, Alex invented time-delay networks in 1989 as part of his PhD at CMU, having previously graduated from MIT with a BSc in 1979. In addition to his academic career, he has co-founded 10 successful commercial ventures. One of these, Jibbigo, was acquired by Facebook in 2013, leading Alex to found Facebook's Language Technologies group. He has received more prizes and distinctions than we have space to list here, and is a fellow of the IEEE and a member of the German Academy of Sciences.