Dr Karen Calteaux holds a DLitt et Phil degree in Sociolinguistics from the Rand Afrikaans University (now known as the University of Johannesburg) which she obtained in the Department of African Languages in 1994. Her career spans positions at the University of Namibia, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC), the Pan South African Language Board (PanSALB), the South African Police Service (SAPS), and at present the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).
Dr Calteaux has been working in the Human Language Technology (HLT) Research Group (now the Digital Audio-Visual Technologies Research Group) at the CSIR since 2009. The Group focuses on voice computing for low resource environments. Dr Calteaux’s own research interests lie in the application of localized language technologies in impactful HLT-enabled solutions with a focus on the human-computer interaction aspects thereof. She has several publications relating to this. In her position as Research Group Leader since 2013, she is responsible for Managing the operations of the Group, providing strategic and research Leadership, undertaking business development, and Managing technology transfer activities.
Dr Calteaux is a Member of the African Languages Association of Southern Africa (ALASA), Leads a sub-committee of the SABS TC37 (Technical Committee on Language Resources), and is the Vice-President of the Digital Humanities Association of SA.
