We are dedicated to removing communication barriers between the Deaf and hearing communities by providing comprehensive tools for Kazakh Sign Language (KSL) education and interaction. Our mission is realized through the development of intuitive, AI-powered features designed for real-life application.
Our platform, built on the groundbreaking Kazakh Sign Language Automatic Recognition System (K-SLARS), offers innovative solutions like text-to-sign translation, sign recognition, and a comprehensive sign language dictionary.
We were honored as finalists in the "Social Impact 2023" competition, organized by Nazarbayev University's Social Development Fund, showcasing our commitment to innovative social entrepreneurship in the field of sign language communication.
Anara Sandygulova was awarded funding by:
1) Nazarbayev University Faculty Development Competitive Research Grant Program 2019–2021 for the project “Kazakh Sign Language Automatic Recognition System (K-SLARS).” Award number: 110119FD4545.
2) Nazarbayev University Faculty Development Competitive Research Grant Program 2022–2024 for “Kazakh-Russian Sign Language Processing: Data, Tools and Interaction (K-RSL4L).” Award number: 11022021FD2902.
3) This work was supported by the Nazarbayev University Faculty Development Competitive Research Grant Program 2026–2028, AI-YM: AI Solutions for Kazakh Sign Language. Award number is SEDS2025005: 040225FD4726.
Principal Investigator · Research Lead
Associate Professor of Robotics and Mechatronics at Nazarbayev University.
PhD in Computer Science from University College Dublin (2015).
Researcher
Master's student in Robotics working on Kazakh Sign Language recognition.
BS in Computer Science from Nazarbayev University (2025).
DevOps Engineer
Fourth-year Computer Science student.
Flutter Developer
Fourth-year Computer Science student.
Flutter Developer · ML Engineer
Fourth-year Computer Science student.
ML Researcher
Fourth-year Computer Science student.
ML Engineer
Third-year Computer Science student.
ML Researcher
Third-year Computer Science student.
Flutter Developer
University graduate.
Backend Developer
Second-year Electrical and Computer Engineering student.
GenAI / ML Engineer
First-year master's student.
Mukushev, M., Ubingazhibov, A., Kydyrbekova, A., Imashev, A., Kimmelman, V., & Sandygulova, A. (2022).
FluentSigners-50: A signer-independent benchmark dataset for sign language processing.
Mukushev, M., Kydyrbekova, A., Imashev, A., Kimmelman, V., & Sandygulova, A. (2022, June).
Crowdsourcing Kazakh-Russian Sign Language: FluentSigners-50.
Koishybay, K., Mukushev, M., & Sandygulova, A. (2021, January).
Continuous sign language recognition with iterative spatiotemporal fine-tuning.
Abutalipov, A., Janaliyeva, A., Mukushev, M., Cerone, A., & Sandygulova, A. (2020, October).
Handshape classification in a reverse dictionary of sign languages for the Deaf.
Mukushev, M., Imashev, A., Kimmelman, V., & Sandygulova, A. (2020).
Automatic classification of handshapes in Russian Sign Language.
