Rupal Patel is a tenured professor and a lab director with interdisciplinary appointments in the Bouvé College of Health Sciences and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences. She is also the founder of the Center for Speech Science and Technology at Northeastern University. Patel holds adjunct appointments within the Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology program in the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, in the department of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts, and the Haskins laboratory at Yale University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of speech neuroscience and speech/language technologies.

Rupal brings decades of real-world clinical and industry experience in applied AI. She recently founded and launched VocaliD, an AI company that creates synthetic voices and assigns them personalities for discerning brands that understand the power of custom voice. The technology also gives a unique voice to individuals living with speechlessness. Named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, Rupal has also appeared in major international news and technology publications, including TED and NPR.

Before joining Northeastern, Rupal was a faculty member of biobehavioral sciences at the Teachers College of Columbia University. She completed her postdoctoral training in speech acoustics at MIT after earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Calgary. She received her master’s and doctoral degrees in speech-language pathology from the University of Toronto.