Dear ISCA members:

Welcome to the next installment of the ISCApad for March 2019!  This edition has a number of updates from the community including upcoming meetings, job openings, theses, and announcements.

INTERSPEECH-2019: [http://www.interspeech2019.org/] will take place September 15-19, 2019, in Graz, AUSTRIA, with the theme being: Crossroads of Speech and Language. Just a reminder that March 29^rd is the deadline for paper submissions (the paper update deadline is April 5^th).

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 Prof.. Keiichi Tokuda as the recipient of the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement 2019 in recognition of “Pioneering the statistical parametric approach to speech synthesis, and for leadership in the provision of enabling software tools.” Prof. Tokuda is the originator of many of the early methods for statistical parametric speech synthesis using HMMs, which now include DNN and LSTM-based statistical parametric speech synthesis methods. Prof. Keiichi Tokuda will deliver a plenary speech in INTERSPEECH 2019. Congratulations to Prof. Keiichi Tokuda!

 The ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement recognizes and honors an individual each year who has made extraordinary contributions to the field of speech communication science and technology. The award of this ISCA Medal has been established since 1989. It.is presented to the recipient by the ISCA President at the INTERSPEECH opening ceremony, when the Medalist also delivers a keynote speech.

Again, this is the first time Interspeech will be held in Austria, and it promises to be a great opportunity to experience speech and language processing in a country where one of the first major published works on speech by Wolfgang von Kempelen originated! There are still opportunities for industry sponsorship, and I encourage companies to consider providing even modest support, since this allows the organizers to provide expanded opportunities for attendees, particularly for students and young researchers exploring job prospects!

Supporting Diversity in Speech Communication:

ISCA has launched a new area on the ISCA website to support diversity in speech communication. This is intended to offer opportunities for organizers of workshops and conferences to help expand diversity representation in terns of geographic, gender, and topic/specialization. Please visit the ISCA website to learn more! https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/

Applications are open for the Tenth Christian Benoît Award:

Applications are also being accepted for the Christian Benoît Award! This award is given out on a biennial basis to a promising young scientist in the domain of SPEECH COMMUNICATION to further their career in the field. If you know of a promising scientist/researcher, please visit the ISCA website to learn more! https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/

Election of members to the Board of ISCA (2019-2023):

March is also an important month for ISCA, since this is when ISCA holds the election of Board Members which occurs every two years, including this year.  We will elect 6 new members to the Board in 2019. I would like to announce that we have concluded the nomination of the ISCA Board election 2019 with 12 candidates received. The voting ballot will start in March 2019. All members will receive an email invitation to vote. I write to thank you for your participation in the nomination process, and call for your participation again by casting your vote!

ISCA INTERSPEECH-2022 (location announcement):

Finally, I would like to update all on the ISCA Board evaluation process which took place for potential sites for ISCA INTERSPEECH-2022. We received four highly competitive proposals which were reviewed extensively by the ISCA Conferences Sub-Committee and discussed in ISCA Board Virtual Meetings as well. The board completed two rounds of voting in order to select the final entry, and I am pleased to announce that ISCA INTERSPEECH-2022 will take place in Dublin, Ireland! I encourage all interested in organizing future Interspeech events to consider submitting proposals, especially for regions which have not hosted Interspeech in recent years!

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-2019!

John H.L. Hansen, ISCA President