ISCA - International Speech
Communication Association


ISCApad Archive  »  2019  »  ISCApad #252  »  Academic and Industry Notes

ISCApad #252

Tuesday, June 11, 2019 by Chris Wellekens

4 Academic and Industry Notes
4-1Master Informatique en Apprentissage et Traitement Automatique de la Langue : ATAL. Universités du Maine et de Nantes France
Les Universités du Maine et de Nantes propose un parcours conjoint de Master Informatique en Apprentissage et Traitement Automatique de la Langue : ATAL !

Le parcours ATAL forme des étudiants issus de filières informatiques à un ensemble de techniques d'apprentissage automatique et de traitement automatique de la langue qui sont au c?ur des applications en ingénierie des langues telles que la traduction automatique, la fouille d?opinions, la recherche d?information, la reconnaissance de la parole et du locuteur? Il s'agit donc de former des étudiants hautement spécialisés qui seront capables de mettre en ?uvre des applications prenant en compte des masses de données complexes et hétérogènes. Au terme de la formation les étudiants seront reconnus comme DataScientist, Chef de projet en ressources linguistiques, Cadre en technologies et services de l?information? 

La formation s?appuie sur des chercheurs issus des laboratoires du LS2N (Laboratoire des Sciences du Numérique de Nantes) et du LIUM (Laboratoire d'Informatique de l'Université du Maine) et sur des acteurs économiques dont les applications nécessitent des connaissances sur le traitement de données langagières. En outre, la formation est très ancrée dans son écosystème régional et les étudiants seront invités à participer à des Meetup et sensibilisés au monde de l?entrepreneuriat. 

Il est possible d?accéder à la formation en M1 comme en M2 selon les acquis du candidat. 
- le M1 peut être indifféremment réalisé au Mans ou à Nantes selon la préférence de l?étudiant. 
- l?ensemble des cours du M2 sont mutualisés entre les Universités du Maine et de Nantes et l?étudiant peut librement s?inscrire au Mans ou à Nantes. Le M2 peut être réalisée en présentiel ou en alternance.

Information
----------------
- Nantes : http://www.master-info.univ-nantes.fr/00542841/0/fiche___pagelibre/&RH=1403710895111
- Le Mans: http://www-info.univ-lemans.fr/?page_id=10
 
Modalités d?accès
--------------------------
- Nantes : http://www.sciences-techniques.univ-nantes.fr/72621571/0/fiche___pagelibre/
- Le Mans : http://www-info.univ-lemans.fr/?page_id=211

 
Contacts
-------------
- Nantes : Emmanuel.Morin@univ-nantes.fr 
- Le Mans : Yannick.Esteve@univ-lemans.fr
 
 
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4-2Virtual Coaches

Modeling Virtual Coaches

The European Horizon-2020 project Council of Coaches aims to develop a tool in which virtual embodied coaches form a team of experts that can discuss amongst themselves and with the user how the user could improve his healthy lifestyle behaviors. The project combines state of the art 3D Virtual Avatars with language and reasoning technology and applies this to the area of lifestyle and behavior change coaching.

The goal of research is to design, implement and evaluate user interaction with the team of virtual agents, the council of coaches (Home Interface) and one-on-one interaction with a single coach (Mobile Interface). In particular it focuses on

  1. Modelling coaches with their own specific agenda and behaviour style aiming at creating unique social relationships with users.
  2. Adapting virtual coaches? behavior to ensure that user maintains his involvement in the relationship with the coaches.

Specific attention will be given to the development of virtual coaches with a wide variety of behavioural characteristics and personality traits. Several studies have shown how low level features such as behaviour expressivity and high level characteristic (e.g. personality traits ) affect user?s involvement in their interaction with the virtual characters and impact his performances (McRorie et al., 2011) (Paiva et al., 2017)).

The work in this research will make use of and build upon the GRETA/VIB platform developed at UPMC (Pecune et al., 2014) for multimodal behaviour generation and for visualizing virtual coaches.

To apply, send a CV and names of reference to    catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr

 

H2020 Council of Coaches

 

 

 

Context:

 

The GRETA/VIB platform is developed at CNRS-ISIR (Pécune et al, 2014). It simulates virtual characters able to communicate with humans in real-time. It is endowed with socio-emotional capabilities. The control of the character is done through two specific languages at the communicative intention level and at the multimodal behavior one. The platform includes several tools to create multimodal behaviors.

 

The GRETA/VIB platform is used within the European Horizon-2020 project Council of Coaches which aims to develop a tool in which virtual embodied coaches form a team of experts that can discuss amongst themselves and with the user how the user could improve his healthy lifestyle behaviors. The project combines state of the art 3D Virtual characters with language and reasoning technology and applies this to the area of lifestyle and behavior change coaching.

 

Job Description:

 

We are looking for an engineer knowledgeable in 3D virtual environment. S/he will participate to Council of Coaches project. Her/his role will be:

 

-          Port the Greta/VIB platform onto Android mobile and VR headset.

 

-          Participate to development of computational model of agent?s multimodal behaviors

 

-          Integrate software modules within the VIB/Greta platform and/or within a bigger software system developed within the H2020 project Coach Council.

 

-          Participate to developers meetings (online and on site) of the H2020 project Coach Council

 

Profile: Engineer in computer science, Master, PhD

 

skills:

 

  • Programming languages and standards: Java, C#, C++, XML, Ogre 3D

 

Mastered skills:

 

  • The ideal candidate will have solid software development, testing and integration skills
  • English (written and oral)

 

Project Length: 1 year position renewable

 

Place: ISIR - UPMC

 

Stipend: depends on applicant qualification

 

Contact: Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS-ISIR; catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr

 

To apply, send a CV, names of reference, master grades (for Master applicants) to    catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr



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4-3IEEE CIS Newsletter on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (open access).
 
Dear colleagues,

we are happy to announce the release of the latest issue of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Cognitive and Developmental Systems (open access).
This is a biannual newsletter addressing the sciences of developmental and cognitive processes in natural and artificial organisms, from humans to robots, at the crossroads of cognitive science, developmental psychology, artificial intelligence, machine learning and neuroscience. 

It is available at: http://goo.gl/pA7WrH

Featuring dialog:
=== 'One developmental architecture to rule them all?'
== Dialog initiated by Matthias Rolf, Lorijn Zaadnoordijk and Johan Kwisthout
with responses from: Niels Taatgen, John Spencer, Gary Jones, Gerard Wolff, Clément Moulin-Frier and Paul Verschure
== Topic: Humans have a unique capability to achieve and learn a wide diversity of skills of all kinds, from low-level sensorimotor skills to very abstract linguistic or mathematical skills. Is it possible to develop theories of how general cognitive architectures can display such a general flexibility for skill learning? This dialog adresses this question, and discusses whether and how it would be useful both epistemologically and in practice to aim towards the development of a ?standard integrated cognitive architecture?, akin to ?standard models? in physics, or whether focusing on simple and partial models should be a better approach. In particular, this question is discussed in the context of understanding development in infants, and of building developmental architectures, thus addressing the issue of architectures that not only learn, but that are adaptive themselves.

Call for new dialog:
=== 'Curiosity as Driver of Extreme Specialization in Humans'
== Dialog initiated by Celeste Kidd
==  This dialog asks the question of why and how humans can be driven to extremely specialize. In particular, it proposes the hypothesis that curiosity may play a fundamental role in this process, and highlights many important open questions about how this could happen, and what are the actual mechanisms of curiosity-driven exploration and learning. Those of you interested in reacting to this dialog initiation are welcome to submit a response by May 30th, 2018. The length of each response must be between 600 and 800 words including references (contact pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr).
 
Let us remind you that all issues of the newsletter are all open-access and available at: https://goo.gl/ZjjZNz

I wish you a stimulating reading!

Best regards,

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer,
Editor of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Cognitive and Developmental Systems
Research director, Inria
Head of Flowers project-team
Inria and Ensta ParisTech, France
http://www.pyoudeyer.com
 
and 
 
Fabien Benureau
Assistant Editor
Inria Mnemosyne team
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4-4new Masters program in Natural Language Processing and Data Science - Computer Science, Speech, Language, and Knowledge Representation at University of Lorraine, Nancy, France

The Institute of Digital Sciences, Management and Cognition at the University of Lorraine
(Nancy, France) opens a new Masters program in Natural Language Processing and Data
Science - Computer Science, Speech, Language, and Knowledge Representation

http://institut-sciences-digitales.fr/idmc-master-degree-in-natural-language-processing/

Do you want to become an expert in Deep Neural Networks, Logic, Speech Processing,
Information Retrieval, Knowledge Representation, ? all of this for Natural Language?
Here's your chance!

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is at the crossroads of linguistics, computer science,
and artificial intelligence. We propose a modern curriculum which combines different
approaches covering both theoretical and applied perspectives.

The program includes a hands-on project in each semester. It ends with a 6-month paid
internship in a company or a research lab.

See the course description below.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can apply for the 1st year (M1) or for directly entering the 2nd year (M2).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Language
-------------
All courses are taught in English (except the 'French for non-native speakers' course).


Fees
-------
The University of Lorraine is publicly funded and therefore offers tuition-free education
for all students including students from both inside and outside EU/EEA/EFTA countries.
The only student expenditures are a nominal semester fee of about 600 euros which
includes health insurance. Nancy?s high quality of life goes hand-in-hand with a low cost
of living.


Why Nancy?
---------------
Nancy is a center of excellence for NLP!

1/Two important research centers:
- LORIA, the computer science research laboratory (http://www.loria.fr/en/)
- ATILF the linguistics research laboratory (http://www.atilf.fr/)

Both research units participate in many national and international research projects.
Their members are highly visible in the international community and regularly publish in
the most prestigious conferences and journals in the field.

2/ The University of Lorraine participates in two Erasmus Mundus Masters funded by the
European Union :
- Erasmus Mundus Master Language and Communication Technology (http://lct-master.org/)
- Erasmus Mundus Master EMLex (https://www.emlex.phil.fau.eu/)


Why NLP?
--------------
Natural Language Processing is a rapidly expanding field.

With the proliferation of digital data, there is a massive need for well-trained
engineers and researchers able to exploit this data for commercial (e-commerce,
recommendation systems, translation, etc) and socio-political (e-learning, opinion
mining, behavioral prediction, etc.) purposes.

Start-ups, small firms with strong R&D profiles and large companies (e.g., in France,
Airbus, Thales, EDF, Orange) are looking for scientists and engineers who can contribute
to the development of systems capable of managing and exploiting textual data.

The GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) are hiring intensively in both the
NLP and the Speech processing domains.

The need for PhD candidates is also strong as shown by the many PhD scholarships offered
by both academic and industrial players.


Contacts
------------
Head of the MSc program:
        Maxime Amblard <maxime.amblard@univ-lorraine.fr>
Secretary:
        Karine Weisse <karine.weisse@univ-lorraine.fr>
Location of the courses :
        École des Mines (Artem Campus, Tram stop 'Blandan')
        http://www.alliance-artem.fr/


Application
---------------
The application file is available here:
https://ecandidat.univ-lorraine.fr

More information:
http://institut-sciences-digitales.fr/application-process-nlp-master-degree/#application


Academic Year 2018-2019
-----------------------------------
From September 3rd to 13th, 2018: Refresher courses in mathematics (probability theory,
statistics) and computer science (algorithms, programming)

M1:
        1st semester from September 17th to January 11th
        2nd semester from January 14th to June 6th
M2:
        1st semester from September 17th to February 15th
        Internship from February to August


In brief
----------
? A program with strong national and international visibility
? Taught entirely in English
? A high quality research environment with two research centers covering a wide range of
disciplines (linguistics, computer science, speech and language processing) and
applications (Human-Machine Interfaces, Speech Processing, Knowledge Retrieval,
Statistical Machine Translation, etc.)
? Studies in a vibrant, human-sized city
? Studies at a low cost (Tuition fees at around 600 euros per year incl. health insurance)


Course Description
---------------------------
M1 1st Semester
---------------------------
PROBABILITIES, STATISTICS AND ALGORITHMS FOR AI
        ? Elementary mathematical tools, statistics, algorithms to define and solve
artificial intelligence problems
        ? Case studies covering both theoretical and practical aspects

CORPUS DESIGN AND ACQUISTION
        ? Written corpora
        ? Speech corpora

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        ? Collection, analysis and formalization of customers' needs
        ? Software design and development
        ? Functional analysis and specifications
        ? Project management

LINGUISTICS FOR NLP (1)
        ? Methods for Natural Language Processing
        ? Phonology
        ? Morphology

PROJECT AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Hands-on project
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M1 2nd Semester
---------------------------
MACHINE LEARNING AND SEMANTIC WEB
        ? Machine learning theory
        ? Data mining
        ? Knowledge retrieval

FORMAL TOOLS
        ? Logic
        ? Formal languages
        ? Calculability and complexity

DATA PROCESSING
        ? Storage and retrieval
        ? Data analysis

LINGUISTICS FOR NLP (2)
        ? Lexicology: lexical units and phraseology
        ? Syntax
        ? Semantics

PROJECT AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Hands-on project
        ? Scientific communication
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M2 1st Semester
---------------------------
DEEP LEARNING AND DATA MINING
        ? Neural networks, Deep neural networks
        ? Data mining (structured data and text)
        ? Collaborative filtering

TEXT AND SPEECH PROCESSING
        ? Processing textual data
        ? Speech processing
        ? Terminology and ontology

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND DISCOURSE
        ? Application to text
        ? Computational semantics
        ? Discourse and Dialog modeling

LEXICONS AND GRAMMARS FOR NLP
        ? Diachronic and synchronic lexicology
        ? Lexical resources
        ? Syntactic framework

PROJECTS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Software project
        ? Law and ethics
        ? Research methods
        ? Professional integration
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M2 2nd Semester
---------------------------
Paid internship (company or research lab)

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4-5New board of ELRA

Further to the last ELRA General Assembly and the first election of the individual members representative, the ELRA Board has been largely renewed. Khalid Choukri, ELRA Secretary General, is pleased to introduce the new ELRA Board and would like to congratulate all the newly elected Officers and Members.

Board Officers

  • António Branco, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, President (new)
  • Simonetta Montemagni, ILC-CNR, Vice-President (new)
  • Petya Osenova, IICT-BAS, Secretary (new)
  • Simon Krek, Jo?ef Stefan Institute, Treasurer (new)

Board Members

  • Gilles Adda, LIMSI-CNRS
  • Nuria Bel, Universitat Pompeu Fabra
  • Sonja Bosch, University of South Africa, Individual Members Representative (new)
  • Tatjana Gornostaja, Tilde
  • Piek Vossen, Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam (new)

Honorary Presidents and Secretary General

  • Nicoletta Calzolari, ILC-CNR, Honorary President
  • Joseph Mariani, LIMSI-CNRS, Honorary President
  • Khalid Choukri, ELDA CEO, Secretary General

Thank you to the outgoing Board Members and Officers for their continuous involvement over the years:

   Henk van den Heuvel (former ELRA President)
   Thierry Declerck
   Maria Gavrilidou
   Marko Grobelnik

 

See also : ELRA Board @ https://bit.ly/2CH9hYU & PR on President election (Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon) @ https://bit.ly/2FqMNNM

 

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4-6M.Sc. Program in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Data Science, Université de Lorraine, Nancy (France)

M.Sc. Program in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Data Science
Université de Lorraine, Nancy (France)


The Institute of Digital Sciences, Management and Cognition
is opening a Masters Program in NLP - ??
Computer Science, Speech, Language and Knowledge Representation

**************

http://institut-sciences-digitales.fr/idmc-master-degree-in-natural-language-processing/
**************

So you want to be a specialist in Neural Networks, Logic, Speech
Processing, Information Retrieval, Knowledge Representation... all
for Natural Language? Well, now's your chance!

Natural Language Processing (NLP) lies at the crossroads of
linguistics, computer science and artificial intelligence. This
Masters Program offers a modern curriculum which combines the
different approaches, and covers both theoretical and applied
perspectives.


In each semester, the program includes a hands-on project.
It ends with a 6-month paid internship in a company or a research
lab. You can find the course description below.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can apply to directly enter at either the first year (M1) or second year (M2) level.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Language
-------------
All courses are taught in English
(except the 'French for non-native speakers' class).


Fees
-------
The University of Lorraine is publicly funded and thus offers
tuition-free education for many students including students
from the EU (243 ? cost per year). The tuition fee for students
from other nations arriving in France at the beginning of
the 2019 academic year will be 3.770 ? per year.

Find more information here:
https://www.campusfrance.org/en/tuition-fees-France

Nancy?s high quality of life goes hand-in-hand with a low cost
of living.


Why Nancy?
---------------
Nancy is a center of excellence for NLP. It can boast of:

1/Two important research units:
- LORIA, the computer science research laboratory http://www.loria.fr/en/
- ATILF the linguistic research laboratory http://www.atilf.fr/

Both research units participate in many national and
international research projects. Their members are highly
visible in the international community and regularly publish
in the most prestigious conferences and journals of the field.

2/ Two Erasmus Mundus Masters funded by the European Union :
- Erasmus Mundus Master Language and Communication
Technology (LCT) http://lct-master.org/
- Erasmus Mundus Master EMLex.
        https://www.emlex.phil.fau.eu/


Why NLP?
--------------
Natural Language Processing is a rapidly expanding field.

With the proliferation of digital data, there is a massive need
for well-trained engineers and researchers able to exploit this
data for commercial (for example: e-commerce, recommender
systems and translation) and socio-political (for example:
e-learning, opinion mining, and behavioural predictions) purposes.

Start-ups, small firms with strong R&D profiles and large companies
(in France this includes Airbus, Thales, EDF, Orange, etc.) are
looking for scientists and engineers who can contribute to the
development of systems capable of managing and exploiting textual
data.

The GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) also recruit
intensively in both the NLP and the Speech processing domain.

There is also a strong need for Ph.D. candidates in the field, as
demonstrated by the many Ph.D. proposals in both the public and
the industrial domain.



Contacts
------------
Head of the Master program: Maxime Amblard
        maxime.amblard@univ-lorraine.fr
Secretary: Karine Weisse
        karine.weisse@univ-lorraine.fr

Location of the courses:
        École des Mines (Artem Campus, Tram stop 'Blandan')
        http://www.alliance-artem.fr/


Application
---------------
Non-European students
---------------
Students from most non-UE countries shall apply on
https://pastel.diplomatie.gouv.fr/etudesenfrance/dyn/public/authentification/login.html?_csrf=a530f0a6-e1d3-4052-ba91-f2cb8029fcd8&codeLangue=EN
(search Traitement Automatique des Langues Nancy)

Students from other non-EU countries can directly apply with the following file:
http://institut-sciences-digitales.fr/applicationfilem-sc_-nlp19-20/


European students
---------------
The application file for EU students is available here:
https://ecandidat.univ-lorraine.fr

Create an account then follow:
        - Offre de formation
        - Institut des sciences du digital, management et cognition
        - Master
        - M1-Traitement Automatique des Langues (TAL) (NANCY) (FI)
           or
        - M2-Traitement Automatique des Langues (TAL) PT Informatique, langue, parole et
connaissances (NANCY) (FI)

More information:
http://institut-sciences-digitales.fr/application-process-nlp-master-degree/#application


Academic Year 2019-2020
-----------------------------------
From 3rd to 13th September 2019: Refresher courses in
mathematics (probability theory and statistics) and computer
science (algorithms and programming).

M1:
        1st semester from September 2nd to January 10th
        2nd semester from January 13th to June 5th
M2:
        1st semester from September 2nd to March 27th
        Internship from February to August


In brief
----------
? A program with strong national and international visibility
? Taught entirely in English
? A high quality research environment with two research centers
covering a wide range of disciplines (linguistics, computer
science, speech and language processing) and applications
(human-machine interfaces, speech processing, knowledge
extraction, statistical machine translation, etc.)
? Studies in a vibrant, human-size city


Course Description
---------------------------
M1 Semester 1
---------------------------
PROBABILITIES, STATISTICS AND ALGORITHMS FOR AI
        ? Elementary mathematical tools, statistics, algorithms
        to define and solve artificial intelligence problems
        ? Case study approach towards mastering both theoretical
        and practical aspects of a topic

DESIGN AND ACQUISITION OF CORPORA
        ? Written corpora
        ? Speech corpora

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        ? Collecting, analysing and formalizing customers' needs
        ? Software design and development
        ? Functional analysis and specifications
        ? Project management

LINGUISTICS FOR NLP (1)
        ? Methods for Natural Language Processing
        ? Phonology
        ? Morphology

PROJECT AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Hands-on project
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M1 Semester 2
---------------------------
MACHINE LEARNING AND SEMANTIC WEB
        ? Machine learning theory
        ? Data mining
        ? Knowledge extraction

FORMAL TOOLS
        ? Logic
        ? Formal languages
        ? Calculability and complexity

DATA PROCESSING
        ? Storage and retrieval
        ? Data analysis

LINGUISTICS FOR NLP (2)
        ? Lexicology : lexical units and phraseology
        ? Syntax
        ? Semantics

PROJECT AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Hands-on project
        ? Scientific communication
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M2 Semester 1
---------------------------
DEEP LEARNING AND DATA MINING
        ? Neural Networks, Deep Neural Networks
        ? Data mining (structured data and text)
        ? Collaborative filtering

TEXT AND SPEECH PROCESSING
        ? Processing Textual Data
        ? Speech processing
        ? Terminology and ontology

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND DISCOURSE
        ? Application to text
        ? Computational semantics
        ? Discourse and Dialog modeling

LEXICONS AND GRAMMARS FOR NLP
        ? Diachronic and synchronic lexicology
        ? Lexical resources
        ? Syntactic framework

PROJECTS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Software project
        ? Law and ethics
        ? Research methods
        ? Professional integration
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M2 Semester 2
---------------------------
Paid internship (company or research lab)

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4-7Call for proposals SLT 2020
Call for Proposals - SLT 2020

January 2019

 

Jason Williams, Kyu Jeong Han, Raul Fernandez, Kai Yu

2019 IEEE SLTC Workshop Sub-Committee

Following on the success of the bi-annual SLT workshop over the past decade, the IEEE Speech and Language Technical Committee invites proposals to host the 2020 IEEE Workshop on Spoken Language Technology (SLT 2020). Past SLT workshops have fostered a collegiate atmosphere through a thoughtful selection of venues, thus offering a unique opportunity for researchers to interact and learn.

The proposal should include the information outlined below.

  • Workshop location and practicalities
    • Geographical Location
    • Climate
    • Transportation options -- major airports, logistics, visas
    • Meals
    • Accommodation -- hotel availability and pricing
    • Workshop venue (facilities, meeting rooms, network access during the workshop, audio/visual equipment)
  • Approximate workshop datesApproximate total cost to participants to attend, including accommodation, meals, and registration fees.
    • Previous workshops have been held in the month of December
    • Status of venue -- whether workshop dates are being held pending IEEE SLTC selection  
  • Estimated budget for 300-400+ participants and expected sponsorships, including venue costs, administration, banquet, coffee breaks, publication costs, etc.
  • Committee Personnel
    • General chair(s)
    • Technical chairs
    • Local arrangements chair(s)
    • Other committee members and roles
  • Tentative program
    • Dates for paper submission, notification of acceptance, proposals for demonstrations, early registration
    • Reception, talks, posters, demo session, banquet, etc.
    • Substantial program additions/changes vs. past instances of SLT

The deadline for proposals is Friday, June 7, 2019.  Send proposals and questions to the workshop sub-committee: Jason Williams (jdw@alumni.princeton.edu), Kyu Jeong Han (kyuhan215@gmail.com), Raul Fernandez (fernanra@us.ibm.com), and Kai Yu (kai.yu@sjtu.edu.cn).  In June, the IEEE SLTC will review proposals, and selection results are expected by July 12, 2019.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, we encourage you to contact the workshop sub-committee in advance of submitting a proposal.  They can provide an example of a past successful proposal and example budget. Further, proposers who make contact before Friday 26 April 2019 may be invited to briefly present in-person at the annual IEEE SLTC meeting at ICASSP 2019, 12-17 May 2019, in Brighton, England, to obtain feedback from the SLTC (https://2019.ieeeicassp.org).  Presentations should be reasonably specific but need not be complete. Note that the SLTC does not have funding available for travel to ICASSP.

The organizers of the SLT workshop do not have to be SLTC members, and we encourage submissions from all potential organizers.  IEEE SLTC members are welcome to participate on proposals, and the organizing committees of past SLT events have included many SLTC members.  To maintain fairness of selection, SLTC members who are affiliated with an SLT 2020 proposal will not participate in the SLT 2020 selection vote.  Further, the members of the workshops sub-committee may not be affiliated with any SLT 2020 proposal. Please feel free to distribute this call for proposals far and wide, and invite members of the speech and language community at large to submit a proposal to organize the next SLT workshop.

For more information on the most recent workshops, please see:

http://slt2018.org for information about SLT 2018 in Athens, Greece

http://slt2016.org for information about SLT 2016 in San Diego, California

https://www2.securecms.com/SLT2014/default.asp for information about SLT 2014 in South Lake Tahoe, Nevada

And feel free to contact the workshops sub-committee with questions.

Jason Williams (jdw@alumni.princeton.edu)

Kyu Jeong Han (kyuhan215@gmail.com)

Raul Fernandez (fernanra@us.ibm.com)

Kai Yu (kai.yu@sjtu.edu.cn)

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4-8General chair and local arrangements chair of SIGDIAL 2020.
The SIGDIAL Exec seeks expressions of interest for the positions of general chair and local arrangements chair of SIGDIAL 2020.
 
GENERAL CHAIR
 
The general chair is responsible for schedule management, budget, communication, publicity, management of vendors not directly related to the local arrangements, and creation and maintenance of the conference website.
 
General chairs have typically attended SIGDIAL multiple times, and have some previous conference organization experience.
 
If you are interested in serving as general chair of SIGDIAL 2020, please email exec@sigdial.org with the following information:
 
- Name and affiliation
- Short statement of your interest in and qualifications for serving as general chair
- Previous experience with SIGDIAL: attendance, previous service positions, publications
- Previous experience with conference organization (for SIGDIAL or other conferences)
 
LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS CHAIR
 
The local arrangements chair is responsible for choosing and contracting with the conference venue for SIGDIAL, and also the Young Researchers? Roundtable on Spoken Dialog Systems (YRRSDS).  They are also responsible for arranging/coordinating space and equipment, management of vendors related to local arrangements, catering and refreshments, organizing the banquet, and providing local information.
 
Local arrangement chairs have typically attended SIGDIAL at least once, and have some previous conference organization experience.  Further, local arrangement chairs are usually based in the same local region as the conference itself.  SIGDIAL 2020 will be (approximately) co-located with ACL 2020.  ACL 2020 will be held in Seattle, USA, July 6-11 2020.  SIGDIAL 2020 will be held immediately before or after ACL, also in Seattle, or somewhere readily accessible from Seattle.  In the past, SIGDIAL has usually (but not always) been held at a university facility, rather than a private facility.
 
If you are interested in serving as local arrangements chair of SIGDIAL 2020, please email exec at exec@sigdial.org with the following information:
 
- Name and affiliation
- Short statement of your interest in and qualifications for serving as local chair
- Previous experience with SIGDIAL: attendance, previous service positions, publications
- Previous experience with conference organization (for SIGDIAL or other conferences)
- Proposed location and venue for SIGDIAL 2020, including description and statement of why it would be attractive for participants
 
SELECTION CRITERIA
 
In addition to self-nominations, the SIGDIAL Exec may nominate further candidates when selecting these roles.  These roles will be selected considering a range of criteria, including previous experience with SIGDIAL, previous experience with conference management, and the representation of the organizing committee as a whole, including geography, industry/academia, gender, seniority, and other factors.  The Exec may contact interested parties to request further information.
 
As in past years, the SIGDIAL Exec is responsible for selecting the SIGDIAL organizing committee.
 
Please direct questions to exec@sigdial.org
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