Shruti Rijhwani, a Ph.D. student in Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Institute, will "define the next decade" and "remake our world," according to the 2022 edition of Forbes' "30 Under 30" list for science.

Rijhwani, who is advised by LTI Associate Professor Graham Neubig, researches using natural language processing techniques to preserve and revitalize languages in danger of becoming extinct due to dwindling numbers of native speakers. At least 40% of the world's more than 7,000 languages face this threat, according to UNESCO. 

"Rijhwani's algorithms help extract text from nondigitized books and handwritten documents and make them accessible online," Forbes wrote in its profile.

Rijhwani collaborates on this work with Daisy Rosenblum, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, and Antonis Anastasopoulos, an assistant professor at George Mason University who previously worked as a post-doctoral research associate at the LTI.

"I'm incredibly honored to have my work recognized on the Forbes 'Under 30' list," Rijhwani said. "I hope that the technologies we've developed to improve digitization for endangered languages will make the thousands of existing printed books in these languages widely accessible to language communities and researchers."