Aanchan Mohan
(he/him/his)
Assistant Teaching Professor

Research interests
- Machine learning
- Natural language processing
- Speech recognition
Education
- PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University — Canada
- MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rutgers University
Biography
Aanchan Mohan is an assistant teaching professor in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Vancouver. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria.
Mohan researches artificial intelligence and machine learning, with a focus on building inclusive, robust, and performant speech and language technology. He earned the prestigious Google Research Scholar Award in 2023, and his research program is supported by Google, MITACS, the University of Victoria, and Northeastern University.
Mohan collaborates with industry and academic partners in British Columbia, across Canada, and internationally. He also co-founded Happy Prime Inc., which works with community members to build inclusive communication software powered by the latest developments in AI. Happy Prime Inc.’s work has received support from InnovateBC and Mosaic BC’s WorkXP program.
Mohan has more than 10 years of industry experience, including management and technical leadership positions at startups and enterprise companies. His former employers include PAI Health, Nuance (since acquired by Microsoft), Global Relay, Malaspina Labs, and Synaptitude Brain Health (a spin-off from the University of British Columbia’s Djavad Mowfaghian Center for Brain Health).
Mohan contributes to the research community by reviewing at top-tier research venues. He has published his research at top-tier conference venues and holds several patents in the areas of recommender systems, biomedical signal processing, and speech recognition. He is also a highly sought after technical speaker and panelist at local, national and international venues.
Recent publications
-
Your voice is your voice: Supporting Self-expression through Speech Generation and LLMs in Augmented and Alternative Communication
Citation: Yiwen Xu, Monideep Chakraborti, Tianyi Zhang, Katelyn Eng, Aanchan Mohan, Mirjana Prpa. (2025). Your voice is your voice: Supporting Self-expression through Speech Generation and LLMs in Augmented and Alternative Communication CoRR, abs/2503.17479. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2503.17479 -
A new approach for fine-tuning sentence transformers for intent classification and out-of-scope detection tasks
Citation: Tianyi Zhang, Atta Norouzian, Aanchan Mohan, Frederick Ducatelle. (2024). A new approach for fine-tuning sentence transformers for intent classification and out-of-scope detection tasks EMNLP (Industry Track), 910-919. https://aclanthology.org/2024.emnlp-industry.68 -
Reinforcement Learning for Power Management in Low-margin Optical Networks
Citation: Sze Ka Tse, Xiaoyang Zhao, Anita Chan, Di Tang, Aanchan Mohan, Carlos Natalino, Michal Aibin. (2024). Reinforcement Learning for Power Management in Low-margin Optical Networks ICTON, 1-4. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTON62926.2024.10647982 -
A powerful and modern AAC composition tool for impaired speakers
Citation: Aanchan Mohan, Monideep Chakraborti, Katelyn Eng, Nailia Kushaeva, Mirjana Prpa, Jordan Lewis, Tianyi Zhang, Vince Geisler, Carol Geisler. (2024). A powerful and modern AAC composition tool for impaired speakers INTERSPEECH. https://www.isca-archive.org/interspeech_2024/mohan24_interspeech.html -
Human Latency Conversational Turns for Spoken Avatar Systems
Citation: Derek Jacoby, Tianyi Zhang, Aanchan Mohan, Yvonne Coady. (2024). Human Latency Conversational Turns for Spoken Avatar Systems CoRR, abs/2404.16053. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2404.16053