Employee Spotlight: Michael Pucher, Head of Technology Design

At Recognosco, our strength lies in the dedication and talent of our employees. In this edition of our Employee Spotlight series, we're excited to highlight one of our brilliant team members that is part of our Technology Design Team. Join us as we delve into their professional journey, accomplishments, and personal insights.

Meet Michael Pucher, Head of Technology Design! Let's take a closer look at their role, achievements, and what motivates them to excel every day.

Tell us about your role at Recognosco:
"I am currently Head of Technology Design and have been with the company now for 2 years. My role is to constantly look to improve our speech recognition SDK platform, Atlas. My role involves evaluating and looking at new approaches to develop the platform."

What did you do before joining the company?
“I started my professional computer science career as a software developer. Then I’ve worked in application-oriented research in the telecom industry on a broad range of speech-related topics like speech recognition, synthesis, and multimodal interfaces. There I also obtained my PhD. Prior to joining Recognosco I’ve done basic research in speech science. I am still teaching at university and providing advise and support to PhD student to stay in contact with the academic world and latest developments.”

What drew you to this company and how did you get started?
"When looking for this role, I was keen to find a position based in Vienna that provided a challenge. I know the industry very well and already knew of Recognosco. I was very interested and keen to work on their solutions."

What do you enjoy most about your job?
"Working with an interdisciplinary team and being able to try out new tech. I enjoy being able to test and trial our ideas and then seeing how they benefit our partners and end users when they are implemented into the product.

AI is currently developing quickly, and there are lots of models to be evaluated. It's a brilliant opportunity to develop new and innovative solutions.

I'm particularly proud of the feature-complete release of Atlas earlier this year, with contributions from the whole team."

What is something that most people don’t know about you?
"Before studying computer science, I was a chef. I am still enthusiastic about food and cooking, don’t get me started on that."

If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why?
"Uh, that is huge. A superpower should definitely be used for solving some of our global problems. Looking into the future would be good for that, and convincing others."

What is your vision for the future of speech technology?
"Some problems in speech technology are solved, so we will see more speech technology evolving in different markets and scenarios like human-X (human, computer, robot) interaction. Of course, always with the caveat of whether users are willing to use the technology and that it is safe. In the future we're likely to see out-of-the-box speech solutions that work for many scenarios. There is still a lot to do in terms of research and development, and things to come."