Dr. Paige Tuttösí’s thesis, I Know You’re Listening: Adaptive Voice for Human-Robot Interaction, explores how social robots can better support second-language learners through customised, adaptive, and expressive speech synthesis.

Graduating from the School of Computing Science, Tuttösí came into the school with degrees in Archaeology and Statistics and retrained herself into becoming an award-winning and insightful computing scientist, forming the foundation for her original insights into her research.

Taking this even further, her research combines linguistics, cognitive science, engineering, and signal processing methods to develop evidence-based adaptive voices for human-robot-interactions. Her research resulted in the first ever second language speaker text-to-speech system, advancing the fields of cognitive science, linguistics and engineering, while also advancing the state of the art in social robotics and conversational AI.

A Rajan Family Scholar, Tuttösí and her work have earned several prestigious awards and recognition including an NSERC Scholarship, Breaking Barriers Interdisciplinary Incentive Grant, and the France–Canada Research Fund. At the world’s premiere conference in Human-Robot-Interaction (HRI) conference, Tuttösí was also selected as a Pioneer in 2025 and earned the 2023 HRI Best Demo Award.

Tuttösí has taken on several leadership roles including general chair for the workshop on Embodied Voices (RSS 2024), co-general chair for Pioneers (HRI 2026), co-chair for the Student Design Challenge (HRI 2027), as well as leadership roles in international research communities.

Angelica Lim, Tuttösí’s academic supervisor has strong praise for Tuttösí’s work.

Says Lim, “In short, Paige Tüttösí represents exactly the kind of scholar that the Convocation Medal was created to honour: a researcher who has produced original, impactful, and technically rigorous work in a genuinely underexplored area; who has engaged her field with unusual breadth and generosity; and who has done so with an interdisciplinary imagination and a social conscience that make her work matter beyond the lab.”

Tüttösí sees how the support and her time at SFU have helped shape her career trajectory.

Says Tüttösí, “My supervisor, Dr. Angelica Lim, played a key role in helping me make the connections that have shaped my career. She is the reason I have made so many international connections and how I landed my current job. Beyond the technical aspects of research, SFU taught me the importance of self-promotion and networking. I also learned how to navigate academia and the broader academic-industrial landscape. It helped me become more self-sufficient in my work and gave me invaluable experience in organizing projects, supervising teams, and seeing projects grow from the ground up.”

Tuttösí currently works as an AI Expert/Engineer with Enchanted Tools in Paris, France as well as a part time postdoctoral researcher for the Department of Linguistics at SFU.