The Computer History Museum (CHM) celebrated a pioneer in robotics, artificial intelligence, and speech recognition as it inducted Raj Reddy, Carnegie Mellon University's Moza Bint Nasser University Professor of Computer Science and Robotics, as a fellow on Thursday, June 24.

The honor recognizes extraordinary individuals for a lifetime of achievement in computing and technology.

"Being selected to be a fellow of the Computer History Museum seems like you have become an antique," Reddy said after the museum announced the honor. "I guess when you have been working with computers for over six decades you do become ancient!"

Reddy was the founding director of CMU's Robotics Institute and a former dean of the School of Computer Science. His achievements include developing the first system capable of recognizing continuous speech, initiating CMU's autonomous vehicle program and creating the Universal Digital Library. The latter — a free, online digital library — now includes more than 1.5 million volumes and book digitization centers in China, India, Egypt and the United States.

The CHM brought together Reddy's colleagues and contemporaries to pay tribute to his lifetime of work. The speakers shared short stories about Reddy and show how his work has impacted the world.

Invited speakers included CMU President Farnam Jahanian; CHM CEO Dan'l Lewin; Tata chair Natarajan Chandrasekaran; Microsoft AI Azure CTO Xuedong Huang; and AI experts and pioneers Kai-Fu Lee, Yunhe Pan and Ed Feigenbaum. Reddy also shared his personal reflections on becoming a CHM fellow.

More information on the event is available on the Computer History Museum website.