Alex Olwal, Ph.D.
Research & Engineering Leader / Product Innovation for AI and AR

Human—AI Interaction · Multimodal Interfaces · Augmented Reality · Wearables · Human—Computer Interaction · Accessibility · Interaction Technology · Ubiquitous Computing · Medical Imaging · Shape Displays · Haptics and Robotics · Speech and Language

Founded and led various teams at Google, including the Interaction Lab. AI & Future Technologies 2024-2025, Augmented Language 2020-2024, Research and Machine Intelligence 2018-2020, Advanced Technologies and Projects 2017-2018, Wearables 2015-2017, Google [x] 2014-2015. Academic research conducted at MIT, Columbia University, University of California, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology), and Microsoft Research, with many fantastic collaborators and contributors at the same or other institutions. Held academic affiliations as lecturer and faculty at Stanford University, Rhode Island School of Design and KTH.

Alex Olwal

Speech Compass
SpeechCompass is a new mobile technology that solves the problem of understanding who's speaking in group conversations by using multiple microphones to detect speech direction, making speech-to-text captions more useful for people with hearing challenges. The system displays visual cues like arrows to show where each speaker's voice is coming from, which tests show users find valuable for following group discussions more easily.
SpeechCompass: Enhancing Mobile Captioning with Diarization and Directional Guidance via Multi-Microphone Localization
Dementyev, A., Kanevsky, D., Yang, S., Parvaix, M., Lai, C., and Olwal, A.
Proceedings of CHI 2025 - Best Paper Award (Top 1%) (ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems), Yokohama, Japan, Apr 26-May 1, 2025, pp. 1-17.

CHI 2025 - Best Paper Award (Top 1%)
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LiveLocalizer: Augmenting Mobile Speech-to-Text with Microphone Arrays, Optimized Localization and Beamforming
Dementyev, A., Kanevsky, D., Yang, S., Parvaix, M., Lai, C., and Olwal, A.
Proceedings of UIST 2023 Adjunct (Adjunct Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology), San Francisco, CA, USA, Oct 29-Nov 1, 2023, pp. 1-3.

UIST 2023 Adjunct
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