Primary Job Title CEO & Founder Primary Organization 
VocaliD
Location Belmont, Massachusetts, United States Regions Greater Boston Area, East Coast, New England Gender Female
LinkedIn View on LinkedIn
Rupal founded VocaliD to give the gift of voice to all those who need and want a voice of their own. Her training as a speech clinician and scientist led to her initial insight to combine the vocalizations of recipients with the speech of healthy donors. After years of research and experimentation, she is now committed to bringing this innovation
to market and in doing so re-envisioning speech prostheses as custom crafted enhancements that make communication more human.
Rupal is a tenured professor at Northeastern University with joint appointments in Communication Science and Disorders and Computer Science as well as numerous adjunct and affiliated appointments at Harvard, MIT, University of Massachusetts and Yale University. She founded and directs the Communication Analysis and Design Laboratory and the Center for Speech Science and Technology. A native of Canada, Rupal received her BS from University of Calgary and her Masters and Ph.D from the University of Toronto. She then completed her post-doctoral studies at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she worked with Professor Kenneth Stevens, a pre-eminent speech scientist. Rupal worked as a speech clinician prior to her doctoral studies which is where she became fascinated by the application of speech technologies to those with communication disorders. Patel has over 50 peer reviewed publications in the areas of speech motor control and assistive communication technology and has raised over $5 million in research funding through the National Science Foundation, various institutes within NIH (NIDCD, NICHD, NIBIB), and private foundations.
