Nick Ruiz

Nick Ruiz, Ph.D. has a diverse work experience in the field of computer science, with a focus on speech and natural language processing technologies. Nick has held various roles in different organizations, starting with their current position as Product Director at Interactions LLC since November 2021, where they are responsible for improving real-time conversation understanding and assistance technologies for customer care. Prior to this, they served as a Principal Inventive Scientist at the same company, where they applied speech and NLP research to develop Trustera, a real-time PCI redaction technology. Before joining Interactions LLC, Nick worked as a Senior Inventive Scientist, also at Interactions LLC, where they conducted research and development on speech-centric natural language processing technologies.

In addition to their industry experience, Nick has also contributed to the non-profit sector. Nick is a co-founder and board member of Miles4Migrants, an organization that uses frequent flyer miles to provide flights for people affected by forced migration. Nick has served as the executive sponsor and product owner of the technologies supporting their operations.

Prior to their work at Interactions LLC and Miles4Migrants, Nick also worked as a Speech Translation Advisor at Waverly Labs, where they provided recommendations for speech and machine translation features and evaluated translation products in conversation scenarios. Nick also hosted product demo sessions at conferences.

Before working in industry, Nick pursued their Ph.D. in Computer Science at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, focusing on the impact of speech recognition errors on spoken language translation quality. Nick also worked as an intern in statistical machine translation and participated in the subtitle translation shared task at the International Workshop of Spoken Language Translation. Additionally, they gained research experience as a research intern at Microsoft, where they worked on synthesizing speech recognition errors for machine translation systems.

Earlier in their career, Nick worked as a research intern at Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz, where they developed a machine translation website called WikiTrans. Nick also gained software development experience at PPL Corporation, where they served as an integrator and co-operative associate, working on software development projects.

Overall, Nick Ruiz, Ph.D. has a strong background in speech and natural language processing technologies, with experience in product development, research, and non-profit work.

Nick Ruiz, Ph.D. earned their Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Computer Science from Houghton University in 2006. Nick then went on to complete their Master of Arts (MA) degree in Linguistics from the University of Groningen between 2009 and 2011. In 2012, they obtained their Master of Science (MSc) degree in Computer Science from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Lastly, from 2011 to 2017, Nick pursued their Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Università di Trento. In terms of certifications, they obtained a Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) certification from the Scrum Alliance in 2019 and a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute in December 2020. Additionally, Nick holds a Product Management Certificate from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business.