Géza Németh
Géza Németh obtained his degree in Electrical Engineering from BME in 1983, followed by a postgraduate specialist engineer qualification in 1985. He earned his doctoral degree at BME in 1987 in the field of signal processing, and defended his PhD degree in 1997.
After obtaining his postgraduate specialist engineer degree, he worked as a development engineer at the BEAG Electroacoustic Factory, and in 1987 joined the Department of Telecommunications and Telematics at BME (now the Department of Telecommunications and Artificial Intelligence) as an assistant lecturer. He soon became a key figure in the speech research laboratory founded by Géza Gordos.
His research spans speech information systems, multimodal and mobile human–machine interfaces, covering the full spectrum from fundamental research through development to practical applications. His name is associated with the MULTIVOX family of speech synthesizers, the MAILMONDÓ email reading system, the ProfiVox PC-based screen reader, the voice-based passenger information system at MÁV railway stations, and—first in the world—the SMSMondó system, capable of reading incoming SMS messages on smartphones. These developments provided crucial solutions for people with visual and hearing impairments.
In his teaching career, he has developed several independent courses and is actively involved in both undergraduate and postgraduate education. He became an Assistant Professor in 1989, was appointed Associate Professor in 2000, completed his habilitation in 2013, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2023.
His scientific work also focuses on the above-mentioned fields. As a result, he has participated in numerous study visits abroad and regularly accepts international invitations. He is also a member of the organizing committees of international conferences. His scientific publications now number close to 200.
He is also highly active in the professional and academic community. He is one of the key figures of the Scientific Students’ Associations (TDK) movement at BME, having served as Secretary of the BME VIK TDK and, since 2000, as its President, as well as a member of the Informatics Professional Committee of the National Scientific Students’ Associations Conference (OTDK). He is an elected member of the Telecommunications Scientific Committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA) and of the Interdisciplinary Standing Committee on Acoustics. He is a member of the International Speech Communication Association and serves as an editorial board member and reviewer for several international journals. Since 2019, he has been the Hungarian contact point for the EU’s artificial intelligence platform and the head of the international relations working group of the Hungarian AI Coalition.
His professional achievements have been recognized with numerous awards, most notably the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary in 2004 and the Academic Excellence Award in 2011. Upon the recommendation of HTE, he received the Gábor Dénes Award in 2020.
Géza Németh has been a member of HTE since 1985. Between 2000 and 2010, he served as a member of the Awards Committee, and since 2005 he has also contributed to the editorial board of the Híradástechnika journal. He has played an active role in organizing numerous joint BME–HTE conferences and continues to do so, and he has also been instrumental in bringing international conferences to Budapest. HTE recognized his contributions with the Silver Badge in 1994 and the Gold Badge in 2016, and he received the Puskás Tivadar Award in 2012, as well as the Kempelen Farkas Award in 1995 and 2000.
With the HTE Lifetime Achievement Award, the Association seeks to honor Géza Németh’s career, recognizing his theoretical and practical achievements in education and speech information systems, as well as his professional contributions and selfless community work within HTE. We warmly congratulate him, thank him for his dedicated work, and wish him continued success!
