Dear Members,

1450 submissions for Interspeech 2013! This number constitutes a new record for Interspeech. It's new evidence of the success of our flagship conference: Interspeech is the world largest scientific event for the speech communication domain.  Now, the Organizing Committee and more specifically the Technical Program Committee and Chairs are in the most stressing time: the reviewing process. They have to deal with hundred of reviewers and thousands of reviews in order to ensure the evaluation of these 1450 submissions, with the high standard of quality characterizing ISCA and Interspeech.

I want to thank in advance the reviewers.  We know that reviewing is a difficult and time consuming task, and we know that you have to evaluate the submissions in a quite short time. We believe in you as you know that the reviewing process is one of the most important points to ensure a successful conference. Please remember also that the reviews are very important for the authors. All of them worked hard to submit their work's best paper, all of them are waiting for comments and decisions, expecting a positive decision.  Some of them will see their paper rejected. This is normal for a selection process. However, we should keep in mind that the reviewing process has two objectives. While we have already discussed the first one, the paper selection, we should emphasize the second one: to help our colleagues and particularly our young colleagues to understand where are the weaknesses of their articles and how they could improve them. This role of the reviewing process affects not only Interspeech but all our scientific area, our future.

So, another time, thanks to all the reviewers who will have in mind these two roles and who will take care to give clear and useful comments and advice when writing their reviews.

April is the end of the ISCA board elections. Please, don't forget to vote before April 30! You all received an email with the election information. If not, please contact us as soon as possible! The ISCA Secretary Douglas O'Shaughnessy, who is in charge of the election process, and myself are happy to announce that David House, as former ISCA secretary, accepted to support us as Election Scrutineer.

Interspeech is also the traditional occasion to highlight several ISCA meritorious members. In addition to the ISCA Scientific Medalist, already announced, we will welcome 6 new ISCA Fellows. I want to thank particularly Steve Young (head of the ISCA Fellows Committee), Keikichi Hirose (ISCA board member in charge of the fellow program) and all the ISCA Fellow Committee members for the work done in this field. And, of course, it is a real pleasure for me to congratulate our new Fellows:
-    Jerome Bellegarda: For contributions to statistical modeling algorithms, and leadership in their application to human language processing
-    Herve Bourlard: For contributions to research and leadership in the fields of statistical and neural network-based speech recognition
-    Daniel Hirst: For contributions to the understanding of intonation, paradoxically one of the most universal yet language-specific features of human language.
-    John Makhoul: For pioneering and sustained contributions to speech modeling and spoken language processing technology
-    Andreas Stolcke: For contributions to research and leadership in speech and speaker recognition, understanding and statistical modelling of spoken languages
-    Keiichi Tokuda: For contributions to research and leadership in speech synthesis and speech signal processing.

Best Regards,
J-F Bonastre
 

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Seventh Christian Benoît Award

Deadline April 29th, 2013

The Christian Benoît Award is delivered periodically by the Association Christian Benoit (**). It is given to promising young scientists in the domain of SPEECH and FACE-TO-FACE COMMUNICATION. It can concern basic or applied research projects.

The Award provides the elected scientist with financial support for the development of a short-term research project that

(1) illustrates concretely the achievements of her/his research work

(2) could help promoting this work in the scientific community and to Grant Agencies

(3) gives an overall view of the state of the art in the research domain.

The proposed research project can have the form of a demonstrator, a technical product or of a pedagogical multi-media product (Movie, Web-site, interactive software…).

The Award is valued at 7,500 Euros(*).

The commitments of the elected scientist are:

--  to attend the Interspeech2013 Conference in Lyon, France

--  to deliver the final product of the project within 2 years

-- to present her/his results in a workshop such as, among others, AVSP, ISSP, or SpeechProsody.

In the application, the candidate should provide

-- a statement of research interests,

-- a detailed curriculum vitae

-- a description of the proposed short-term research project. The description should include a presentation of the scientific and/or pedagogical objectives and of the methodological aspects, a link with the former research work of the applicant, as well as a detailed description of the provisional budget.

Applications will be evaluated by an international committee including experts in the field of Speech and Face-to-Face communications and representatives of the Institutions supporting the award.

Applications should be sent to

Pascal Perrier: Pascal.Perrier@gipsa-lab.grenoble-inp.fr

before Monday April 29^th, 2013

. Electronic submissions are mandatory.

The successful candidate will be notified by June 10^, 2013. The Award will be delivered at the Interspeech 2013 Conference in Lyon (France) (http://www.interspeech2013.org/

For further information, please contact Pascal Perrier.

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* 3,500 Euros will be given immediately; the remaining 4,000 Euros will be available at reception of the multi-media project by the Christian Benoit Association. Travel and registration costs necessary to attend the Interspeech 2011 Conference will have to be paid on this grant.

** For details about the Association Christian Benoît and the past awardees of the Christian Benoît Award see http://www.gipsa-lab.fr/acb/

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 Dear members of ISCA,

All voters in the upcoming election for the ISCA Board must be active members in 2013.

 Please note that a 'yearly renewal' at ISCA does not actually give a 12-month term. 

To simplify administration, the ISCA Board decided in 2002 to have all memberships 

end either on June 30 or Dec. 31, which means that any given renewal lasts a variable 

duration (8-14 months) depending on when the renewal occurs; see:

 http://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/membership/251 

All those who paid their fees via registration at Interspeech-2012 are active ISCA 

members till June 30, 2013. However, those who paid a yearly renewal early in 2012

 must renew for 2013 to render their account active. We invite you to verify your status:

 http://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/iscamember/list 

With your member number XXXX, you can retrieve a forgotten password:

 http://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/iscamember/forget 

We hope you will be participating in this year's election, which is expected to start 

next week and end on April 30th. All ISCA members will get an invitation email to vote.

 Best regards, 

Douglas O'Shaughnessy ISCA Secretary 

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Video archives are available in 

http://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/archive/video-archive 

where keynote speeches from IS 2007, 2010 and 2011 can be seen. Very soon we will have 

the material for IS 2012 as well.

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CALL FOR CANDIDATES
AFCP THESIS PRIZE 2012

Since 2004, the French-speaking Association for Speech Communication (AFCP - http://www.afcp-parole.org/) awards
an annual scientific prize for an excellent thesis to promote research in spoken communication, basic or applied, in the fields of Computer Science, Humanities, Social Sciences and Life Sciences (see http://www.afcp-parole.org/spip.php?rubrique172 for past laureates). This award supports and disseminates the work of young researchers.
The prize is awarded by a jury composed of researchers from the elected board of AFCP (http://www.afcp-parole.org/spip.php?article1718). It will be officially presented at the JEP conference, in June 2014.
The winner will receive the sum of 500 euros and will be invited to present his/her work to the community of spoken communication. Moreover his/her thesis will be published as a book in the collection 'Parole' (Speech) (published by CIPA).

 The thesis can be written in English provided it comes from a French speaking laboratory.
CALENDAR
Deadline of submission: 30 April 2013
AFCP jury's decision: 30 September 2013 Award ceremony: JEP 2014
CONDITIONS
Any doctor whose thesis is written in French or English (in case of another language, please contact AFCP by sending an e-mail to david.langlois@loria.fr) in a French-speaking laboratory and was defended between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2012 may apply. All application is limited to a single edition of the award. Only complete applications will be considered.
APPLICATION
To apply, you must:
(1) Send an e-mail stating your intention to apply with your name, title of the thesis, the name of the supervisor, and the date of defense to: david.langlois@loria.fr. You will receive an acknowledgment.
(2) Upload your thesis manuscript in PDF on the AFCP website server: http://www.afcp-parole.org/spip.php?page=depot_these
(3) Send your complete file on CD containing a single file (named YOURNAME.pdf), and in order: (i) summary of thesis (2 pages), (ii) a list of publications, (ii) scan of thesis reports (manuscript and defence) (iv) a
scan of a letter by your supervisor (v) a CV (with full contact details including email).
At the following address: David Langlois - Bureau C132 - LORIA - Campus Scientifique - BP 239 - 54506 Vandoeuvre-lès-Nancy Cedex FRANCE
DATE OF SUBMISSION *************** April 30, 2013 *****************

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