Dear ISCA members:

Welcome to the next installment of the ISCApad for March 2018!  This edition has a number of

updates from the community including upcoming meetings, job openings, theses, and announcements.

Interspeech-2018: [http://www.interspeech2018.org/] will take place September 2-6, 2018, at the

Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC), Hyderabad, India, with the theme being: Speech

Research for Emerging Markets in Multilingual Societies. Just a reminder that March 23^rd is the

deadline for full paper submissions (this is really the deadline! - note that initial titles/abstracts are due

by March 16^th as placeholders).

ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement:

As is customary at ISCA Interspeech, we make several awards to recognize

leadership in our community. I am pleased to announce that ISCA has selected

Dr. Bishnu Atal as the recipient of ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement 2018 in

recognition of 'Pioneering contributions to speech coding and speech analysis.'

Several of his papers have been landmark contributions to the field of speech

modeling (see: B. Atal, S. Hanauer, “Speech Analysis and Synthesis by Linear

Prediction of the Speech Wave,” Journal Acoustical Society of America, vol. 50, 637

(1971); B. Atal, “Effectiveness of linear prediction characteristics of the speech wave for automatic

speaker identification and verification,” Journal Acoustical Society of America Vol. 55, (1974)).

Dr. Bishnu Atal will deliver a plenary speech in INTERSPEECH 2018.

Congratulations to Dr. Bishnu Atal!

The ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement recognizes and honors an individual each year who has

made extraordinary contributions to the field of speech communicationscience and technology. The

award of ISCA Medal has been established since 1989. ISCA Board announces the recipient of the year

in March. ISCA Medal is peresented to the recipient by the ISCA President at INTERSPEECH opening

ceremony, when the Medalist also delivers a keynote speech.

ISCA Medal for Service:

This year, ISCA will recognize the extraordinary service contributions of Prof.

Christian Wellekens, who has been providing support for ISCA since the

organization was established! Of the many areas he has championed, the

ISCApad has been the primary mechanism for information dissemination for the

ISCA community, and Chris has overseen this effort in a consistent and

professional manner. The ISCA Community extends a sincere thanks to Prof.

Christian Wellekens, who will be recognized at the ISCA INTERSPEECH-2018 opening ceremony

with the ISCA Medal for Service. Congratulations to Prof. Christian Wellekens!

Again, this is the first time Interspeech will be held in India, and it promises to be a great opportunity to

experience the diversity of speech and language processing in a country that manages daily life with

122 major languages. There are still opportunities for industry sponsorship, and I encourage companies

to consider providing even modest support, since this allows for the organizers to provide expanded

opportunities for attendees, particularly for students and young researchers exploring job prospects!

Memorial Recognition: Dr. Man Mohan Sondhi

It is with great sadness that I share with the ISCA community of the passing of Dr

Mohan Sondhi in Feb. 2018. Those of you who have worked in the field of speech

modeling coding, analysis, and modeling know of the landmark work Mohan has made

in the field, with a career that spanned many decades at AT&T Bell Laboratories.  He

 is credited with establishing the first solution for echo cancelation in the field for

voice communications. A memorial service was held for him where many of

this colleagues from AT&T Bell Laboratories highlighted the remarkable impact he

had on their lives, and the speech and language community. These included comments from Larry

Rabiner, Bishnu Atal, Joe Hall, Aaron Rosenberg, Fred B.H. Juang, Nikil Jayant, Rich Cox, Gary Elko,

Shri Narayanan, Sadaoki Furui, Juergen Schroeter, Roberto Pieraccini, Julius Goldstein, and Jacob

Benesty. Many noted that Dr. Sondhi was a pioneer, scholar, mentor, and dear friend who will be

greatly missed. We will include a more extensive highlight of these comments and his life’s work on

the ISCA website.

As always, we welcome feedback and input from the ISCA community – if you have suggestions for

our society or want to be involved, please let us know!

We look forward to your participation in ISCA and Interspeech-2018!

John H.L. Hansen, ISCA President

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Dear ISCA Member,

We are now open for nominations for ISCA’s Distinguished Lecturers for the period 2018-19.  Details of the scheme are available at http: //www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/distinguished-lecturers

Each nomination should include the following information:
  - a short biography of the candidate
  - selected publications
  - a website, or a resume that provides this information
  - topics/titles of up to three possible lectures that the nominee co uld give

Please note that the nominator must ensure the candidate is willing to s erve if elected.  Also, nominations from previous years will be only c onsidered if updated.  Finally, self-nominations are permitted, but mu st include a letter of support from an ISCA Fellow or Board Member.

Nominations should be sent to dl_nominations@isca-speech.org before 31 J anuary 2018.

Thank You

Roger K. Moore
Chair: ISCA Distinguished Lecturers  Selection Committee

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At the start of this new year 2018, we invite you to update your contact and
 professional information on the ISCA Membership Portal:
   http://www.isca-speech.org/iscamember/member.php

 This is of particular importance for reviewers since the new Reviewer Portal
 retrieves informatil from the Membership Portal. If you are one of the people
 who have multiple START IDs with different emails, please let us know your
 preferred username and we will see about cleaning this up.

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SCOOT - Speech Communication On-line Training

The ISCA board is planning to set up an on-line portal, SCOOT,  on the ISCA web site to help and encourage students to enter the Speech Communication area. The goal is to provide students with an easy route to high-quality, up-to date learning resources which can be tailored to their individual needs.

The multidisciplinary nature of speech research raises problems for how students are introduced to our field. Students of various backgrounds may become interested in speech: while there are very few, if any, degree programmes centred on speech, speech modules are taught in a wide variety of curricula: in phonetics and linguistics, speech therapy, perceptual psychology, electrical engineering, computer science, communications and mathematics. Students come to these modules from different backgrounds and with different skills, requiring different training resources.

Many institutions do not have established speech research groups but nevertheless offer speech modules, and few speech groups are active across the entire axis from phonetics to speech technology. Consequently, many speech modules are not delivered as well as they might be, and teachers as well as students may need refreshing on new techniques (DNNs for example).

SCOOT will point students to material of all kinds: tutorials, lectures, videos, toolkits, interactive software, databases and so on. The only condition is that the material is freely available on the internet. SCOOT will be organised within a software platform which is designed to help students to learn,

At the moment we are collecting suggestions for items which should be available within SCOOT. You can make a suggestion using the google form on

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd-o6GOiADoJ4Xtik3AvFckonHBdTpcFnSHhpoDz0OhmdroMQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

and you can see the responses so far on

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13uLM63MqITXOsAlUIa-rC6d6O50zGzEnRxTJbz0X8lE/edit#responses

We hope to launch SCOOT at Interspeech 2018.

Phil Green (p.green@sheffield.ac.uk) for the ISCA Board.

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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 2010 can be seen. You will also find video archives 

of many other conferences.

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