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Degree programme

Speech and Language Technology for AI, Computing Sciences and Electrical Engineering

Tampere University

Making machines competent in human communication

Spoken and written languages are the core elements of being a human. But how can machines understand human language? How do large language models, the backbone of modern AI systems, operate? What kinds of information do different forms of language carry, and how can we extract that information from text data and speech signals? Language and speech technologies form the technical foundation that allows humans and machines to speak the same language, supporting a large variety of modern technologies, such as text- and voice-based AI systems, information retrieval, voice over IP, and generation of synthetic voices.

Type

Master's degree (University)

Degree earned

Master of Science (Technology)

Planned duration

2 years

Extent of studies

120 ECTS

City

Tampere

Tuition fee for non-EU/EEA citizens

12000 € per academic year

Language and Speech Technology for AI combines signal processing, machine learning, linguistics, and computer science to develop text- and speech-based systems for various applications. Language technologies allow machines to deal with different forms of written language, enabling applications such as language model based AI systems, machine translation, information retrieval, text summarization, information extraction, and question answering. Speech technologies enable conversion of acoustic speech signals into machine-understandable form, and thereby analysis of speech from various perspectives, such as what is said, who is speaking, what is the speaking style, or what is the emotional state of the speaker.  Speech technologies also transformation of the signal for various purposes, such as compression and transmission, denoising, and intelligibility enhancement, and naturally, machine generation of realistic-sounding speech. Together language and speech technologies form the basis for many modern technologies, such as conversational agents, speech-to-speech translation, and systems for spoken language understanding. 

Key content of studies

During your studies, you will become familiar with statistical and rule-based approaches to natural language processing, fundamentals and advanced techniques for speech processing, and modern approaches to deep learning and neural language models. You can also choose to deepen your understanding of human speech by pursuing elective studies in phonetics, studying more about audio signal processing, or you can focus on applications of language and speech technologies for conversational agents, fine-tuning of large language models, or use of language technologies in translation and information retrieval. During the two years of master’s studies, you will obtain a broad view to key technologies in text and speech processing and ability to apply these technologies to solve real-world problems.
 

Excellent career opportunities

As a graduate, you will have knowledge and skills to understand, utilize, and further develop technologies operating on speech and text data—data central to all human-human and human-machine communication. Such expertise is required in many private and public sector roles where analysis or other processing of spoken and written language is involved, ranging from data analyst to AI agent developer and from robotics engineer to forensics investigator. MSc degree with specialization in Language and Speech Technology for AI also provides a strong foundation to pursue doctoral studies in academic institutions. 

Path to Doctoral Studies

After graduation, you’ll be eligible to apply for doctoral programmes in Finland and internationally, continuing your journey in advanced research and innovation.

Curriculum

Speech and Language Technology (MSc Tech) is one of the engineering specialisations in the Master’s Programme in Computing Sciences and Electrical Engineering.

Programme curriculum is currently under preparation and will be published in the beginning of 2027.

Strong research supports your studies!

Get to know Computing Sciences unit of the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences (ITC)

For more information

Please read through the information provided. For further questions regarding the application process, contact our Admissions office at admissions.tau@tuni.fi or for questions regarding the content of the programme, please contact itc.studies.tau@tuni.fi.