AUG 9, 2020

Dear ISCA members:

Welcome to the next installment of ISCApad for August 2020!   Hope your summer is progressing well. In this issue you will find updates for meetings, job openings, theses, and announcements. COVID-19 pandemic continues to impact the world in terms of work, social engagement, and most importantly health of all – so please do all you can to ensure the safety of yourselves, colleagues, family and friends. Research and advancements in the field of speech communication is even more critical in the times we are all facing, since human support via communication for all is critical for the well being of society.

COVID-19 continues to impact the world – and many of our ISCA colleagues, researchers and friends. Many countries are and have recognized and adopted best practices including practicing safe social distancing and the use of face coverings. Please do all you can to ensure the safety of yourselves, colleagues, students, and friends and family.

INTERSPEECH-2020: [http://www.interspeech2020.org/] (Oct. 26-29, 2020)

Papers: the organizing process has progressed well in the last month. The IS-2020 Technical Committee has moved forward with the review process of 2140 paper submissions, resulting in a total of 1020 conference paper acceptances which include all technical areas including a number of approved special sessions. All submissions underwent a rigorous review process with two Area Chairs for each sub-area who oversaw 3-4 reviewer assignments and final assessment and decision process of papers. There were many very good submissions, but unfortunately not all manuscripts could be accepted for the technical program. I extend a sincere thanks to all those reviewers who submitted reviews, as well as Area Chairs and all members of the Interspeech-2020 Technical Program Committee, who were involved in establishing an excellent program for IS-2020. So, after much discussion within the Interspeech-2020 Organizing Committee, as well as ISCA Board, it has been decided that ISCA INTERSPEECH-2020 will be a distant/virtual conference this October, so there will not be physical presentations made in Shanghai, China this Oct. This decision was a difficult one to reach, since there was hope of having a hybrid conference with a mix of in-person and remote access participation. In the end, the logistics of running two events like this simultaneously would far exceed the organizational resources in place to run Interspeech, and the IS-2020 Organizing Committee in collaboration with the ISCA Board came to a unanimous decision to have IS-2020 this year be completely remote, primarily to ensure the safety, health and wellbeing of all ISCA Members involved with our flagship conference.

All Oral Presentations: Since Interspeech-2020 will be completely remote, all accepted papers will be oral (i.e., no distinction between oral and poster presentations). More details will follow for all authors (since both this ISCApad as well as Interspeech-2020 website latest information), but authors would be expected to prepare an extended video presentation of their paper to be uploaded and allowed for viewing offline. In addition, each author would prepare a short 2 slide (title slide + 1 overview slide) presentation of 1-2min, which will be played prior to a period of Q&A for each paper. The goal here is to allow as many presentations to be viewed and experienced by ISCA IS-2020 participants in approximately 102-110 sessions. The logistics of these are currently being finalized by the IS-20 Tech Committee.

Keynote Speakers: This year, there will be four keynote presentations from world recognized experts in the fields of speech communication. These presentations will consist of the follow speakers:

• Janet B. Pierrehumbert, University of Oxford (recipient of the ISCA Scientific Medal)

• Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Carnegie Mellon University

• Lin-shan Lee, National Taiwan University

• Shehzad Mevawalla , Amazon Alexa

We thank these distinguished researchers for their contributions to the technical program for Interspeech-2020 and look forward to their presentations and follow-on Q&A sessions.

ISCA Student and Young Scientist Travel Awards: since IS-2020 will be remote, it has been decided that a larger number of ISCA Travel Awards will be made this year since expenses will be reduced to only IS-2020 registration fee and one-year ISCA Membership dues. ISCA Board in collaboration with the Interspeech-2020 Organizing Committee will increase the number of awards made this year by approximately 2x, to encourage students and young scientists from all regions who have papers, or are from regions which have limited travel resources, to expand ISCA membership participation. PLEASE encourage your students, or young researchers to submit travel award applications.

• Aug 28, 2020 Notification about ISCA Travel Grants

• Sept 01, 2020 Early-bird registration deadline

• Sep 23, 2020 Standard registration deadline

Remote attendance would also be associated with a reduced registration fee. 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).

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)