Nigel Ward

Nigel Ward is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley (1991), and previously served on the faculty of the University of Tokyo for ten years before joining UTEP in 2002. His research focuses on the intersection of spoken language and human-computer interaction, particularly prosody's role in dialog systems, speech-to-speech translation, and cross-cultural communication. Ward has led NSF-funded projects, including the development of resources for conversational speech-to-speech translation research and contributions to the AI Institute for Transforming Education for Children with Speech and Language Challenges. He is a recipient of the Fulbright Research Fellowship and has authored books like Prosodic Patterns in English Conversation.

• Education: Ph.D. in Computer Science (UC Berkeley, 1991)
• Previous Affiliations: University of Tokyo (1992–2002), Visiting Professor at Kyoto University (2015–2016)
• Key Roles: Chair of Speech Prosody SIG (2018–2024), Co-creator of Prosody Tutorial series

Research Interests: Prosody modeling, dialog systems, speech translation, and applications in education and assistive technologies. Current projects include quantifying prosody's role in trust-building with AI agents and improving speech-to-speech translation through cross-lingual prosody modeling.

Featured Grants: NSF awards (e.g., $600,000 for resource suite development, 2024–2027). Collaborations include Olac Fuentes and Divette Marco.