From teaching machines to understand human emotion  to bringing an engineering lens to understand and support  human mental health and wellbeing, Shrikanth “Shri” Narayanan has spent three decades at the intersection of engineering and humanity. The professor at the Viterbi School of Engineering’s Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science has now earned one of the field’s highest honors: election to the National Academy of Engineering.

A USC University Professor, Narayanan also holds faculty appointments in USC Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences (Psychology, Linguistics) and the Keck School of Medicine of USC (Pediatrics, Otolaryngology–Head & Neck Surgery) reflecting his interdisciplinary breadth, and serves as USC’s inaugural Vice President for Presidential Initiatives.

The NAE recognized Narayanan, who holds the Niki and Max Nikias Chair in Engineering, for his “contributions to and leadership in human sensing and machine intelligence with impact on national security, health and media.” In a reflection of work that defies conventional boundaries, he was elected across two distinct fields: Computer Science and Engineering, and Special Fields and Interdisciplinary Engineering.

An Engineer’s Path

Growing up in Chennai, India, Narayanan wanted to become a doctor. The human body fascinated him: how it worked, how its systems connected. At 17, he had his acceptance to medical school in hand but unexpected turns led him to the engineering school. But his passion for human health remained, leading to  ask himself: what if he explored the human condition through a different discipline?

The switch to electrical engineering turned out to be revelatory. Narayanan realized he could apply signal processing and systems theory to understand human systems. It gave him a unique perspective: an engineer who views people and their experiences as the central focus, not an afterthought.

When Narayanan joined the famed AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill  as a researcher in 1995, he encountered a problem that would influence his career. The speech and language technologies being built all targeted one demographic: healthy adults. What about children? He and his collaborators began exploring that question.

They quickly discovered uncharted territory. Children’s speech evolves constantly as they mature; not just physically, but cognitively and socially too. To study these patterns systematically, the researchers needed to establish new scientific groundwork. Their approach combined sensors and imaging with signal processing to track developmental changes. The implications extended beyond typical development: these same techniques could serve children with autism and language delays.

Where Technology Meets Human Need

Shri Narayanan

At the heart of Narayanan’s work is a driving question: how can engineering help us better understand what it means to be human? His research portfolio reads less like a standard academic CV and more like a map of technology’s most urgent human challenges.

Early in his career, Narayanan had a breakthrough that captures his approach perfectly. He figured out how to speed up MRI technology enough to watch human speech happen in real time. Inside the human throat and mouth, he witnessed an intricate choreography: muscles, tissues, and air moving in precise coordination to produce a single word. It was beautiful, and it was useful. The same technology that revealed new insights into how children learn to speak also opened doors for treating cancer patients and stroke survivors trying to regain their speech.

The voice and language technologies he patented helped lay the groundwork for the cloud-based speech processing systems that now power voice assistants used by millions worldwide. For national defense, he led development of the first two-way automated speech translation systems, enabling soldiers to communicate across language barriers in real time, moving beyond simple phrase translation to genuine cross-cultural conversation.

Much of this pioneering work has been conducted through USC’s Information Sciences Institute (ISI), where Narayanan has led groundbreaking R&D projects with DARPA and IARPA for more than two decades. His work at ISI has produced several “firsts” in the field: the creation of early AI conversational systems, the two-way speech translation systems mentioned above, and automated tactical language training tools. More recently, his ISI research has focused on understanding human cognitive and psychological performance, including discovering objective markers for suicidality and depression: work with profound implications for mental health care.

Making Invisible Inequities Visible

Narayanan’s collaboration with the Geena Davis Institute shows what happens when you point sophisticated technology at everyday injustice. His team built AI tools to do something human observers simply couldn’t manage at scale: count who gets to talk in movies and television.

The numbers told a stark story. Women appeared and spoke for only about a third of screen time. But these weren’t just statistics for a journal article. The United Nations now uses his systems to track progress toward gender equality. Media companies use his patented technology to create more inclusive content before the cameras even roll.

From Research to Real-World Impact

Narayanan has co-founded two companies to ensure his research doesn’t remain confined to academic journals. Lyssn provides AI-powered platforms now used nationwide in child welfare, crisis intervention, and behavioral health settings. Behavioral Signals Technologies brings emotional intelligence to both national security operations and commercial applications, helping organizations understand not just what people say, but how they feel.

In work teaching machines to recognize human emotions, ethical questions aren’t an afterthought for Narayanan. He believes they must be woven into every stage of research, from the initial framing of questions through design choices to implementation and evaluation. This means bringing diverse voices into the process from the start and remaining vigilant about both intended and unintended consequences as technology evolves.

A Philosophy of Collaboration

“My engineering work has always been inspired by making a direct connection to people and the society at large,” Narayanan said. Though his research spans seemingly disparate domains, from MRI imaging to media analysis, he sees a constant thread: “the core human-centeredness of my engineering work.”

Narayanan moved to USC in 2000, drawn by the chance to teach and work across disciplinary boundaries. What brings him the most satisfaction? Working alongside students in his lab, he says, and what he learns from them. That cross-pollination across health sciences, social sciences, and the arts, combined with California’s appeal, made the academic path irresistible.

He talks about honors like the NAE election with genuine humility, seeing them as acknowledgment of something larger than individual achievement. Success in this kind of work, he emphasizes, emerges from bringing together many minds and perspectives, from medical professionals to educators to industry partners. Throughout his career at USC, where he has risen from assistant professor to University Professor, the institution’s highest faculty rank, Narayanan has cultivated precisely these kinds of collaborations across health sciences, social sciences, and the arts.

The NAE honor caps a remarkable recent run of recognition, including the 2023 ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement, a 2023 IEEE SPS Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award, the  2024 IEEE Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award and the 2025 IEEE James L. Flanagan Speech and Audio Processing Award. With over 1,000 publications and numerous patents, Narayanan continues to shape the future of human-centered artificial intelligence.

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