Dear ISCA members:

Welcome to the next installment of ISCApad for April 2020! As always, this edition has a number of updates from the community including upcoming meetings, job openings, theses, and announcements.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19/Coronavirus outbreak is still the major news impacting the world – and certainly many of our ISCA colleagues, researchers and friends. So, I ask that we all continue to practice safe social distancing – and stay safe and healthy! We know COVID-19 is impacting many logistics for conference/workshops worldwide including INTERSPEECH, as well as all forms of human engagement – including speech communication & interaction.

INTERSPEECH-2020: [http://www.interspeech2020.org/] (Oct. 26-29, 2020), will still take place in Shanghai, China. The ISCA Board, as well as INTERSPEECH-2020 Organizing Committee continue to monitor and track developments of COVID-19, in an effort to ensure all attendees for IS-2020 as well as satellite workshops are safe and able to participate. INTERSPEECH will still take place this fall in Shanghai, China. We will keep all updated via emails, postings on ISCA Facebook & Twitter feeds. We continue to monitor the WHO (World Health Organization) status on COVID-19 [https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019]. For this month, we do not have any new information, other than to say that we wish to encourage ALL to submit papers for ISCA INTERSPEECH-2020, knowing that we are committed to following the rigorous steps needed to establish a full technical program. The conference will take place on Oct. 26-29, 2020 at the Shanghai International Convention Center, with tutorials on Oct. 25. The submission and review process has also been updated with the following timeline:

 May 8, 2020 Paper submission deadline

 June 6, 2020 Show and tell submission due

 July 24, 2020 Paper acceptance/rejection notification

 Aug 10, 2020 Notification about ISCA Travel Grants

 Aug 24, 2020 Early-bird registration deadline

 Sep 23, 2020 Standard registration deadline

Authors who have a paper accepted to INTERSPEECH-2020 will have the option either to attend physically, or to attend remotely. Remote attendance would also be associated with a reduced registration fee.

INTERSPEECH-2020 PROCEEDINGS: In the event that the ISCA INTERSPEECH-2020 physical conference would need to be canceled due to COVID-19, ALL accepted papers will be published in the standard format in the Proceedings of INTERSPEECH-2020 as usual (i.e., including release on ISCA Archive). The INTERSPEECH-2020 Organizing Committee has established an internationally respected Technical Committee, and as commitment to our ISCA Membership, we encourage all researchers in the field to submit your papers for consideration for IS-2020.

2020 ISCA MEDAL FOR SCIENTIFIC ACHIEVEMENT:

Last month, I had the pleasure of announcing the recipient of the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement. Again, please join me acongratulating

Prof. Janet Pierrehumbert (Oxford e-Research Centre; Oxford Univ.), who is our recipient this year! This is the highest ISCA award for science achievement, and certainly well deserved for the remarkable contributions Prof. Pierrehumbert has made to the field of speech communications, and in particular to Phonology.

2020 ISCA FELLOWS Announced:

So, now I would like to include additional positive news! Over the past few months, the ISCA Fellows Selection Committee has worked to seek out nominations and endorsements for this year’s ISCA Fellows selection. The ISCA Fellows Selection Committee maintains a rigorous process of collecting and evaluating all nominations (more details are found on the ISCA webpage at: https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/honors/fellows). After extensive evaluations and reviews, the following six distinguished researchers will be elevated to the status of ISCA FELLOW for 2020. Their citations as well as affiliations are highlighted below. Please join me in congratulating these well deserving colleagues for their research contributions to the field of speech communications! All will be recognized at ISCA INTERSPEECH-2020 this fall.

Prof. Paavo Alku (Finland) 'For contributions in voice source analysis and its applications.'

Prof. Catherine Best (Australia) 'For contributions to non-native speech perception, bilingualism, and language acquisition.'

Prof. Martin Cooke (Spain) 'For contributions to speech perception modelling, robust speech recognition and objective intelligibility models.'

Prof. Thomas Hain (United Kingdom) 'For leadership in the field of automatic speech recognition.'

Prof. Satoshi Nakamura (Japan) 'For contributions to research on multi-lingual and cross-lingual spoken language communication systems'

 Prof. Bjorn Schuller (United Kingdom) 'For contributions to computational paralinguistics, and research and leadership in the speech processing community.'

Workshops and Challenges surrounding INTERSPEECH-2020: we are continuing to work with organizers of the numerous workshops and challenges which surround the INTERSPEECH-2020 conference. The IS-2020 Organizing Committee as well as the ISCA Board are well aware of these satellite events, and are working with the organizers to facilitate an effective transition to the new dates in Oct. 2020.

Latest Updates: Please keep informed of the latest events on the ISCA Webpage, INTERSPEECH-2020 webpage, and ISCA Facebook and Twitter feeds (@ISCAFOX).The Board and the IS-20 Organizers will continue to monitor the situation and will communicate any further changes as soon as possible. Our goal is to ensure a safe and technologically invigorating conference experience. We look forward to welcoming you this October – with the safety of our membership at the forefront.

We look forward to your participation in ISCA and INTERSPEECH-2020! Until the next ISCApad, be safe and stay connected to our community!

John H.L. Hansen (ISCA President)