Aby Louw completed his studies in Electronic Engineering at the University of Pretoria and immediately delved into the realm of speech technologies, specializing in text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. In 2004, he embarked on a professional journey at CSIR, specifically within the Human Language Technologies Research Group. He has remained a part of this group, adapting and evolving with it through its various transformations up to the present day.
His career spans over 20 years as an accomplished C developer, during which he has successfully overseen the development of portable medium to large-scale projects. His expertise extends to bridging the gap between low-level C libraries and both interpreted and compiled programming languages. He has garnered hands-on experience in implementing a wide spectrum of machine learning techniques, encompassing traditional pattern recognition as well as cutting-edge deep learning, applied to both research and commercial systems. Furthermore, he has extensive knowledge in the application of digital signal processing within the context of commercial-grade software.
In his professional journey, he has published both locally and internationally and have led small, diverse teams comprising highly skilled researchers and developers, guiding them towards the achievement of common goals. One of his most notable accomplishments is serving as the principal architect and engineer behind the Qfrency text-to-speech system. This achievement represents a significant milestone, as the Qfrency system stands as the first commercial-grade TTS engine capable of synthesizing text in all the 11 official South African spoken languages. The successful commercialization of the Qfrency TTS system has paved the way for its widespread adoption across various sectors, both domestically and on the international stage. Noteworthy fields of application encompass education, assistive technologies, call centers, and various other domains.
