Rate My Professor Nigel Ward

Ward's primary research area is spoken language processing, focusing on prosody and real-time responsiveness in spoken dialog systems. At UTEP, he directs the Interactive Systems Group, developing empirical models from human communication practices to enhance dialog systems, speech-to-speech translation, language assessment, and human-computer interaction. He chaired the Speech Prosody Special Interest Group from 2018 to 2024 and is an organizer of the Interspeech 2026 Challenge on Transfer of Pragmatic Intent in Speech-to-Speech Translation. Ward authored Prosodic Patterns in English Conversation (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and A Connectionist Language Generator (Ablex, 1994). Key publications include "Prosodic features which cue back-channel responses in English and Japanese" (2000), "Non-lexical conversational sounds in American English" (2006), and "Spoken Language Interaction with Robots: Recommendations for Future Research" (2022). His awards encompass the Best Paper Award at the IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology (2022), Best Paper Award at PACLING (2001), Fulbright Scholar (2015-2016), Kokuhi Fellowship (Japanese Government, 1988-1989), and National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship (1983-1986).