Speech Processing in Realistic Environments  - SPIRE

 9 January 2016, Groningen, the Netherlands

 In cooperation with SPIN 2016

 http://spin2016.nl and http://inspire-itn.eu/index.php/inspire-events/workshop-spin2016

 Deadline for submission of abstracts: 20 September 2015

Description of the workshop

Although listeners often experience more than one adverse condition simultaneously (e.g., noise and visual distraction), classical research methods have traditionally only addressed adverse conditions individually. This has contributed to the fragmentation of speech communication research into numerous sub-disciplines that rarely interact. While each type of adverse condition can have important consequences on its own, it is often the combination of conditions that conspires to create serious communication problems especially for elderly and hearing-impaired individuals.

In 2012, a Marie Curie Initial Training Network called Investigating Speech Processing in Realistic Environments (INSPIRE) was initiated with the aim of creating a community of researchers who can exploit synergies between the sub-disciplines of speech communication. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers with common interests in human and automatic speech recognition in challenging conditions of real environments (e.g., under increased cognitive load, divided attention, environmental noise, accented speech, non-native knowledge, hearing impairment & hearing loss).

Topics of the workshop include, but are not limited to:

• State of the art empirical research on speech perception in challenging, realistic listening environments
• Experimental and clinical methods for research in naturalistic speech perception
• Computational modeling of speech intelligibility for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners under realistic conditions
• Tools and corpora for testing and comparing speech intelligibility
• Integration of human auditory processing and machine speech recognition

Keynote speakers 

• Jonas Obleser
• Jonathan Simon
• Third keynote speaker to be announced

Submission process 

We call for extended abstracts (1 page) covering original, unpublished research, or function as a new review, introduction or opinion of a relevant topic.  Submissions can also include work in progress. Submissions must be written in English and are limited to 1 page, excluding references. Abstracts about conducted research should contain analysis results and a brief discussion. References should be put on the second page. Submissions longer than 1 page will be rejected. The conference will be conducted in English. We accommodate both oral talks and poster presentations.

Submission is managed through the http://spin2016.nl website. Please find a direct link here.

Important dates

20 September: abstract submission deadline to SPIN and SPIRE (authors indicate their preference for SPIN or SPIRE)

15 October: Notification of acceptance of submissions

30 October: registration opens

15 November: final submission deadline for  updates of approved contributions

9 January 2016: SPIRE workshop

Program Chairs

Bert Cranen (Radboud University Nijmegen)

Sven Mattys (University of York)