CV

Yannick Estève

Ph.D., Professor

Core Competencies

Scientific Leadership & Laboratory Direction — Direction of two major French computer science and speech technology laboratories (LIUM, LIA); creation and leadership of the Claude Chappe Computer Science Institute; management of 50–90-member research units; long-term scientific strategy; team development; interdisciplinary coordination.

Speech & Language Technologies — Automatic speech recognition, speech translation, self-supervised learning, federated learning for speech, speaker and emotion analysis, multimodal speech–language modelling, privacy-preserving speech technologies, evaluation methodology.

Programme & Project Management — Scientific lead or principal investigator in large European (FP7, H2020), national (ANR, DGA, France 2030) and international projects (JSALT 2025). Coordination of multi-partner research programmes, budget oversight, deliverable planning, and evaluation campaigns.

Research Organisation & Community Engagement — PhD supervision (19 defended, 6 ongoing); organisation of major conferences and workshops (SIGDIAL 2025, TALN 2022, SLSP 2017); member of 45+ PhD committees; reviewer for major journals and conferences; chair of shared tasks for IWSLT.

Industrial Collaboration & Technology Transfer — Scientific leadership in partnerships with Airbus, Orange, Thales, Kyutai, NXP, Elyadata, Lundi Matin, Voxygen, Allosat, and several others. Experience with speech-technology transfer recognised by the 2016 European Commission Innovation Radar Prize.

Complementary Entrepreneurial Experience — Co-founder of Stenomedia and Voxolab, bridging academic results with applied speech-technology contexts (media, analytics, services).

Professional Experience

Chairholder – LIAvignon Partnership Chair in Artificial Intelligence

Avignon Université, France — 2023–Present

  • Lead a major AI partnership chair involving Airbus, Orange, ChapsVision, ValidSoft, LNE, Orkis, INRIA Défense et Sécurité, and Avignon Université.
  • Coordinate research programmes dedicated to AI-based speech, voice and speaker processing, with emphasis on explainability, ethics, multilinguality, and reliability.
  • Oversee collaborative research actions, industrial relations, and strategic orientation.

Head of the Computer Science Laboratory of Avignon (LIA)

Avignon Université, France — 2020–2025

  • Directed the LIA, a 90-member public research laboratory including 30 permanent researchers, 40 PhD students, engineers, postdocs and support staff.
  • Defined scientific strategy across speech and language processing, optimisation, networks and cloud-oriented AI.
  • Strengthened industrial collaborations and national/international visibility.

Founder and Head of the Claude Chappe Computer Science Institute

Le Mans Université, France — 2015–2018

  • Founded the institute at the request of the University’s President.
  • Coordinated the overall computer-science strategy of the university across five teaching units and two research laboratories.
  • Managed educational programmes for 600 students across Le Mans and Laval campuses.

Head of the Computer Science Laboratory of Le Mans (LIUM)

Le Mans Université, France — 2012–2016

  • Directed LIUM (50-member research lab) specialised in speech and language technologies and technology-enhanced learning.
  • Organised research axes, coordinated funding strategy, and strengthened partnerships.

Professor in Computer Science

Avignon Université / Le Mans Université — 2010–Present

  • Conduct research on speech recognition, speech translation, self-supervised learning, privacy-preserving speech processing, and multimodal models.
  • Supervise PhD candidates, postdocs and engineers (19 defended theses, 6 ongoing).
  • Teach AI, machine learning, deep learning, NLP, and core CS courses.

Co-founder – Stenomedia and Voxolab

Avignon, France — Since 2007

  • Co-founded two companies exploring applied speech-technology solutions in media and analytics.
  • Provided scientific leadership and contributed to prototype development and evaluation, while maintaining a research-driven academic career.

Research Engineer – France Télécom R&D

Lannion, France — 2002

Key Achievements

  • Laboratory leadership: Directed two major French research laboratories (LIA and LIUM) and founded the Claude Chappe Computer Science Institute.
  • Scientific excellence: Around 200 international peer-reviewed publications; >5000 citations; h-index >35.
  • Award-winning innovation: Recipient (team) of the European Commission Innovation Radar Prize (Industrial & Enabling Tech, 2016).
  • Large-scale project leadership: Lead or scientific leader for numerous national and European projects (ANR, FP7, H2020, DGA, France 2030), including ESPERANTO, E-SSL, SpeechPrivacy, PANTAGRUEL, SELMA, ON-TRAC, DEEP-PRIVACY, MAGMAT, EPAC, etc.
  • International impact: Project Lead for JSALT 2025 TTS4ALL, coordinating 24 researchers worldwide.
  • PhD training: 19 completed PhD theses under supervision, 6 ongoing; member of >45 PhD committees across Europe.
  • Community leadership: Chair of the organising committees of SIGDIAL 2025, TALN 2022, SLSP 2017; organiser of several IWSLT shared tasks.
  • Industrial partnerships: Academic lead in collaborations with Airbus, Orange, Thales, Kyutai, NXP, Voxygen, Allosat, and others.

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science (Speech & Language Processing) — Université d’Avignon, France
  • M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics & Computer Science — Université d’Avignon, France

Selected Publications & Open-Source Work

Full list available at: https://yannickesteve.com/publications/ or Google Scholar

  • Key contributions (via LIA group) to SpeechBrain: multilingual ASR/TTS recipes, encoder architectures, TTS pipelines, and evaluation tools.

Professional Service

  • Reviewer: Interspeech, ICASSP, IEEE TASLP, ACL, Computer Speech & Language.
  • Organizer of workshops and special sessions on speech AI and related topics.
  • External expert for research programs and doctoral committees.
  • Mentor in European AI initiatives and collaborative networks.