Our products started as a research project in 2003 at the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute under funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

DARPA Program Manager Dr. Ralph Chatham was inspired to support the project after listening to one of the first soldiers who went into Afghanistan in 2002. The captain told how he and his comrades reluctantly rode on tiny ponies into a town, totally relying on their Northern Alliance escorts who only spoke Pashto and some broken Russian and Arabic while the U.S. soldiers only spoke English and some broken Russian and Arabic. When the town’s people came out on the streets the soldiers did not know if they were friendly or hostile from their gestures, demeanor and words.

Dr. Chatham explains, “I wanted to ensure that no American soldier or Marine would again ride blind into a foreign culture. I challenged the research community to create a training tool that would teach the brain behind every trigger finger and behind every steering wheel a bit of the gestures, culture and mission-oriented vocabulary of the land they were in. I also told the researchers that they had to perform the training with only two discontinuous weeks of contact time with the students.”

In 2004 we transitioned the project from the lab into field use by the U.S. Armed Services. In 2005 the project’s lead researchers at USC started our company to further develop and commercialize the products in both defense and non-defense markets. We serve our defense and national security customers worldwide through our wholly owned subsidiary Alelo TLT, LLC.

Our team

We employ professionals in instructional design and development (pedagogy, curriculum development, educational psychology, adult learning), linguistics and foreign languages, natural language processing and computational linguistics, automated speech recognition, computer science (artificial intelligence, software engineering, modeling, simulation), human-computer interaction, videogames, graphics arts and animation, and media production.
» Careers at Alelo

W. LEWIS JOHNSON, PH.D. | Co-founder, CEO & Chief Scientist
Dr. Johnson co-founded our company while he was director of the Center for Advanced Research in Technology for Education (CARTE) at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California, where he was the principal investigator of the Tactical Language project that resulted in our products. He left USC ISI in 2007 to join us full time, but continues to be active in research focusing on the successful adoption of interactive learning environments. His work on Tactical Language won DARPA's Significant Technical Achievement Award in 2005. His article on the Politeness Effect in pedagogical agents, co-authored with Richard Mayer and Ning Wang, won the Most Cited Prize in 2011 from the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.
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ANDY GRUENDEL | Business Development Manager
Andy has 32 years of Military and Corporate experience. He spent over 24 years in the US Army as an Infantryman, holding a majority of the enlisted leadership positions throughout his career. He led small units into combat and has several overseas deployments. After leaving the Army, Andy went to work as the Director of Business Development for a large wholesale distributor in the tidewaters area of Virginia. When the company was sold, Andy returned to government service and worked as a Curriculum Developer for the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), where he was responsible for the entire 3rd year curriculum until an opportunity to directly support the warfighter arouse. He joined a small disabled veteran-owned business as the Senior Irregular Warfare Military Analyst and worked closely in the development of the Future Immersive Training Environment. It was during this time that Andy interacted with the Alelo development team and appreciated how Alelo's immersive training environment provided the war-fighter with tools to make them more effective. Andy joined the Alelo team in October 2011 to lead and provide support to Alelo's Business Development effort, insuring that our products and services can be appreciated in a larger and more significant footprint. Andy holds a Master's of Science (Management) Degree from ASU and a Certificate in Fighting Global Terrorism from AMU.

MICHAEL EMONTS | Director of Government Programs
Mr. Emonts has 16 years of experience in the fields of language teaching and technology research.  From 2001 to 2006, he served as Director of Language Technology at the Defense Language Institute where he worked on DoD-wide language technology efforts and established the Language Data Development Center to manage large-scale data collection efforts in support of DARPA research programs (Babylon, CAST, TransTac, GALE).  During his government service, Mr. Emonts directed evaluation efforts of language translation devices and language learning software for senior DoD leadership (e.g. Whitehouse, 4-star generals) based on US government standards.  He has also served on various DoD committees to further DoD technological capabilities.  Prior to his government service, Mr. Emonts performed speech recognition and artificial intelligence research at Sony Electronics in their entertainment robots division.  He has published research in the areas of speech recognition, machine translation, and language pedagogy, and has authored four patents in the areas of Chinese speech recognition and natural language processing.  He is fluent in English and Cantonese (and some Mandarin), and holds degrees in Computer Science (BS), Asian Studies (BS), Language Acquisition (MA), and Linguistics (MA) from Brigham Young University. » More

KATE HENDERSON | Administrative Director

Kate is a graduate of Boston University, School of Business Administration. She has many years of administrative experience working for law firms and has worked in Singapore and London. Kate oversees Alelo's administrative operations, including office management, finance, accounting, contracts, human resources and recruiting.