Rupal Patel
Director, The Voice of Women Lab, Northeastern University
Rupal Patel is a Professor at Northeastern University with joint appointments in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders and the Khoury College of Computer Sciences, and a core faculty member at the Institute for Experiential AI. She has been on the Northeastern faculty since 2003 and directs the Voice of Women (VOxx) Lab and the Applied Speech Technology Research and Innovation Center, where her teams investigate speech and voice as dynamic, non-invasive biomarkers of neurological and physiological health.
Patel is also an entrepreneur, having founded VocaliD, a spin-out from her research that pioneered the creation of personalized synthetic voices for text-to-speech systems. She served as CEO until the company’s acquisition by Veritone in 2022, where she became the Vice President of Voice AI and Accessibility, leading generative AI initiatives across media, talent acquisition, and regulated sectors. Returning to Northeastern full time in 2024, her research leverages voice as a window into health, advancing the idea of “the sound of health” to transform how conditions are diagnosed, monitored, and treated.
Her work has been featured by TED, NPR, BBC, and MIT Technology Review. She is a Fellow of the Aspen Institute’s Health Innovators Fellowship and serves as a board member, advisor, and investor to health technology startups and nonprofit organizations.