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ISCApad #272 |
| Wednesday, February 10, 2021 by Chris Wellekens |
4 Academic and Industry Notes
| 4-1 | M.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
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| 4-2 | FIAT/IFTA Media Study Grants
The Media Studies Commission of the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) is dedicated to fostering collaboration between research and archive communities and mediating the growth of scholarly expertise that adds value to audiovisual archives by means of innovative research. To this purpose, the Media Studies Commission has set up the Media Studies Grant as a way to promote and ensure the valorization of academic knowledge for archival practice. It is a programme that offers support for research carried out at FIAT/IFTA member archives or is of direct relevance to one or more of our member archives. Priority is given to projects that are relevant for the history of member archive institutions, or promise innovative insights into (digital) media historiography or archival practice in general.
2020 Call for Projects
In 2020, FIAT/IFTA’s Media Studies Commission is looking to commission research that adds value to and helps us understand the role of audiovisual archives in a shifting, converging media environment.
Digitization and digital tools enable novel ways of doing and telling media histories. With it, new possibilities for working with archival material and data in academic research open up. At the same time, new tools for discovery, annotation, visualization now span the possibilities of analyzing cultural heritage with a ‘long data’ and distant reading perspective We welcome studies addressing (but not necessarily limited to) the following areas:
Awarded candidated are expected to deliver by the end of their grant period:
All output needs to mention the support of FIAT/IFTA. Successful candidates are required to present their research results at the FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Dublin, 26-29 October 2020. ObjectivesThe Media Studies Grant makes available a maximum of €7000 for original and innovative projects that aim to:
Any questions? Please contact our commission members! For questions pertaining to access, archival collections and datasets made available for reasearch by different archival institutions, you may contact our following members:
Herbert Hayduck (ORF, Austria): archiv@orf.at
Questions pertaining to academic research can be addressed to: Dana Mustata, University of Groningen, D.Mustata@rug.nl Requirements
BudgetApplicants can ask for a budget of €2500 up to a maximum of €7000 to support their travel and accommodation costs for the purpose of the proposed study, including travel to FIAT/IFTA-event (see below under “output”).
Researchers affiliated to a research institution who also have teaching responsibilities can use (part of) the allocated budget to buy themselves the research time needed for the proposed study. In this case, they should specify the research time that will be charged on the budget.
Senior researchers may use (parts of) the budget to hire interns or student assistants to assist with tasks on the project (e.g, corpus annotation). When third-party personnel is hired on the project, the senior researcher remains in charge of the project and is resonsibible for the final output.
EligibilityWe encourage master and PhD students as well as researchers affiliated to a university to apply for a Media Studies Grant with FIAT/IFTA Media Studies Commission.
Master and PhD students applying for a Study Grant need to send in together with their application a letter from their thesis supervisor showing support for the proposed study.
Awarded studies must be affiliated to a FIAT/IFTA member archive, either by exploring their collection or datasets for research purposes and/or carrying out research that is of direct relevance to a member archive institution.
Applicants should provide a support letter from FIAT/IFTA member‘s representative providing the collections which will be used in the study.
How to apply:Applicants must send in an application for a Media Studies Grant. The applications should not exceed a maximum of 1000 words and need to include a:
Project description. This should outline the rationale of the project, the main research question(s), a description of the topic being researched, indication of the archival material or dataset to be studied and an explanation of the relevance of the proposed study for the research as well as archive communities. In case the project is part of a larger project, the candidate needs to specify how the proposed study contributes to the overall project.
Output. Candidates should specify the output resulting from the proposed study, including publications, presentations, software development, corpora annotation, and any other forms of knowledge utilization (e.g. virtual exhibitions, video essays, interactive storytelling applications etc.). At the end of their study, successful candidates are required to present their findings at a FIAT/IFTA public event to be agreed between the Media Studies Commission and the successful candidate and send in a written report outlining the research they’ve conducted and the main findings of their research. This report will be made available on the FIAT/IFTA website.
Workplan. Applicants should detail as much as possible all the research activities they plan to carry out as part of the proposed study and the time allocated for each of these activities. Please be aware that the Media Studies Grant only supports small-scale projects of 3-5 months.
Budget. Travel, accommodation and secondment costs can be covered by the Media Studies Grant. The budget can also be used for funding short-term internships, archive annotation campaigns, or paying for transport/accomodation fees required for the interactions with the FIAT archive member. For experimental projects, minimal technical costs may be eligible. In any technical costs are involved, we encourage the applicant to make contact with the Media Studies Commission before submitting their application, to ensure that the costs can be covered by the grant. Applicants should detail how the budget will be used. In case the proposed study is part of a bigger project, the applicant should specify any additional funding he/she may have received. Researchers asking for a secondment grant, should specify how their allocation of teaching and research time is divided and how much research time they wish to allocate to the proposed study and charge on the budget. Senior researchers hiring interns or student assistants to assist with the project, need to provide a statement with the number of hours and the budget allocated to the hired personnel.
Communication and dissemination activities. Applicants should present a communication and dissemination plan of how they intend to publicize and make available the findings of their study for the research and archive communities.
Applications should be sent in PDF format by 15 March 2020 to Herbert Hayduck at: archiv@orf.at.
All applications will be assessed internally by the members of the Media Studies Commission. Selected candidates are expected to present their study at the International FIAT/IFTA World Conference in Dublin.
More about the International Federation of Television Archives (FIAT/IFTA) FIAT/IFTA provides a forum for exchange of knowledge and experience between its members, to promote the study of any topic relevant to the development and use of audiovisual archives and to establish international standards on key issues regarding all aspects of audiovisual media archive management. Within FIAT/IFTA, the Media Studies Commission promotes academic research that promotes knowledge, understanding and research of holdings of member audiovisual archives. 1 Please check in advance whether any datasets are available for research at the archive institution you’re interested in collaborating with. 2 The candidates carry full responsibility for determining the copyright status of the archival material they may want to re-use their digital output. To avoid copyright infringements, always check with the archive holder on the copyright status of the archival material you’re interested in re-using.
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| 4-3 | Speech research and COVID 19 at the Indian Institute or Science, Bangalore This project, named ''Coswara'' (https://coswara.iisc.ac.in/), attempts to provide a simple tool for diagnostics of Covid-19 based on respiratory, cough and speech sounds. As most of the major symptoms of the disease include respiratory problems, the proposed project aims to detect and quantify the biomarkers of the disease in the acoustics of these sounds. The project requires the participants to perform a recording of breathing sounds, cough sounds, sustained phonation of vowel sounds and a counting exercise. The entire response requires about 5 minutes of recording time. Along with these recordings, the tool also records patient's health status (without any personally identifiable information) as well as age, gender and location. The audio dataset collected will be released for researchers across the world to develop a potential diagnostic tool using signal processing and machine learning methods. The project is in the data collection stage and will go through an experimental validation before the full approval as a potential diagnostic tool. Given the highly simplistic and cost effective nature of the tool, we hypothesize that, even a partial success success for the tool would enable a massive deployment as a first line of diagnostic tool for the pandemic. The project is not aimed to replace the chemical testing or the imaging methods but to merely supplement those with a cost effective, fast and simple technique.
The webpage for data collection is here.
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| 4-4 | Recorded ICASSP 2020 on-demandICASSP 2020 registration has re-opened! Sign up to view recorded on-demand content through June 8, 2020.
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| 4-5 | IEEE/ACM TASLP Special issue on Eight Dialog System Technology Challenge
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| 4-6 | Call for contributions to a thesis at University of Toulouse.
Dear Sir or Madam, We are contacting you in the context of a research project on the development of standard reading passages for speech and voice assessment. This study is part of Timothy Pommée’s PhD thesis at the Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, France). This project is carried out in collaboration with the Hospitals of Toulouse, the University Cancer Institute of Toulouse Oncopole and the University of Oslo. The primary aim of this thesis is to identify the needs for objective assessment of speech disorders (particularly speech intelligibility), in order to help develop new speech assessment tools that are tailored to the needs of clinicians and researchers. We aim to create a new standard reading passage, specifically designed for speech and voice assessment. As, to our knowledge, no guidelines exist for this task, we have initiated this Delphi project in which we would like to invite you to take part. The aim of this project is to involve a large international panel of professionals (clinicians and researchers) active in the fields of speech and voice, in order to reach a consensus on what criteria have to be taken into account when creating a standard reading passage for speech/voice assessment. Target audience: This study is addressed to professionals (clinicians, researchers, lecturers) who are currently engaged in activities in at least one of the following fields: - speech sound disorders (incl. dysarthria, apraxia/dyspraxia, orofacial structural deficits, head and neck oncology, velar insufficiencies, hearing impairment and articulation disorders) - fluency disorders (stuttering/stammering) - voice disorders By 'activities', we understand (if at least approximatively 20% relate to speech/voice): - clinical activity - research - academic activity - industrial activity - a combination of the above The Delphi method: The Delphi technique is an extensively used group survey methodology that is conducted over several consecutive rounds and aims to reach a consensus among a panel of individuals with expertise (both professional and experience-based) in the investigated field. This study is quasi-anonymous: the identity of each participant is only known to the main investigator/moderator, and only via the provided email address (to monitor round-to-round response 2 rates); participants remain anonymous to each other, which allows for freedom of expression without any social or professional pressure from peers. For more information about the Delphi method: - Diamond IR, Grant RC, Feldman BM, Pencharz PB, Ling SC, Moore AM, et al. Defining consensus: A systematic review recommends methodologic criteria for reporting of Delphi studies. J Clin Epidemiol 2014;67:401–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.12.002. - Hasson F, Keeney S, McKenna H. Research guidelines for the Delphi survey technique. J Adv Nurs 2000;32:1008–15. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.2000.t01-1-01567.x. - Hsu C-C, Sandford BA. The Delphi technique: Making sense of consensus. Pract Assessment, Res Eval 2007;12. https://doi.org/10.7275/pdz9-th90. - McPherson S, Reese C, Wendler MC. Methodology update: Delphi studies. Nurs Res 2018;67:404–10. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNR.0000000000000297. Our study: As stated above, this Delphi survey yields to seek agreement through an international decision-making process, on what criteria should be taken into account when creating a new reading passage for speech/voice assessment. There also appears to be a lack of consensus regarding the terminology of speech-related concepts as well as the assessment methods, which in turn may influence the decisions taken when implementing new speech assessment materials. This consensus survey will be structured as follows: 1) Definitions of speech-related concepts* 2) Perceptual and objective speech measures* 3) Criteria for creating standard reading passages *questions in these sections will only be presented to participants with activities in speech and fluency disorders In light of the investigated topic and the targeted expert group, we hope to achieve our goal within three (max. four) rounds, between July 2020 and not later than February 2021. Each online survey will be available for 2-3 weeks for you to complete at your convenience and the first round will take about 30-40 minutes to complete (the following rounds will be shorter). None of the surveys will have to be completed in a single sitting, as you will be able to save your answers at any time to resume the questionnaire later. It is very important that participants complete the survey in each round. The reliability of the results could be compromised if participants drop out of the study before its completion. However, it is of course possible at any time to withdraw from the study. To reduce the likelihood of high drop-out rates affecting the outcome of this study, we ask you to only agree to participate if you think you will be available to complete all three to four rounds.
Information notice
Project title: « Delphi consensus survey – Developing reading passages for the assessment of speech and voice » Principal investigators responsible for the project: Timothy Pommée (PhD), Julien Pinquier (thesis supervisor), Julie Mauclair and Virginie Woisard (co-supervisors), Renée Speyer Research location: Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (Université Paul Sabatier – Toulouse III, France) Dear Sir or Madam, We are contacting you in the context of a research project on the development of standard reading passages for speech and voice assessment. This study is part of Timothy Pommée’s PhD thesis at the Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (Université Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, France). This project is carried out in collaboration with the Hospitals of Toulouse, the University Cancer Institute of Toulouse Oncopole and the University of Oslo. The primary aim of this thesis is to identify the needs for objective assessment of speech disorders (particularly speech intelligibility), in order to help develop new speech assessment tools that are tailored to the needs of clinicians and researchers. We also aim to create a new standard reading passage, specifically designed for speech and voice assessment. As, to our knowledge, no guidelines exist for this task, we have initiated this Delphi project in which we would like to invite you to take part. The aim of this project is to involve a large international panel of professionals (clinicians and researchers) active in the fields of speech and voice, in order to reach a consensus on what criteria have to be taken into account when creating a standard reading passage for speech/voice assessment. Target audience: This study is addressed to professionals (clinicians, researchers, lecturers) who are currently engaged in activities in at least one of the following fields: - speech sound disorders (incl. dysarthria, apraxia/dyspraxia, orofacial structural deficits, head and neck oncology, velar insufficiencies, hearing impairment and articulation disorders) - fluency disorders (stuttering/stammering) - voice disorders By 'activities', we understand (if at least approximatively 20% relate to speech/voice): - clinical activity - research - academic activity - industrial activity - a combination of the above The Delphi method: The Delphi technique is an extensively used group survey methodology that is conducted over several consecutive rounds and aims to reach a consensus among a panel of individuals with expertise (both professional and experience-based) in the investigated field. This study is quasi-anonymous: the identity of each participant is only known to the main investigator/moderator, and only via the provided email address (to monitor round-to-round response rates); participants remain anonymous to each other, which allows for freedom of expression without any social or professional pressure from peers. For more information about the Delphi method: - Diamond IR, Grant RC, Feldman BM, Pencharz PB, Ling SC, Moore AM, et al. Defining consensus: A systematic review recommends methodologic criteria for reporting of Delphi studies. J Clin Epidemiol 2014;67:401–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2013.12.002. - Hasson F, Keeney S, McKenna H. Research guidelines for the Delphi survey technique. J Adv Nurs 2000;32:1008–15. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.2000.t01-1-01567.x. - Hsu C-C, Sandford BA. The Delphi technique: Making sense of consensus. Pract Assessment, Res Eval 2007;12. https://doi.org/10.7275/pdz9-th90. - McPherson S, Reese C, Wendler MC. Methodology update: Delphi studies. Nurs Res 2018;67:404–10. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNR.0000000000000297. Our study: As stated above, this Delphi survey yields to seek agreement through an international decision-making process, on what criteria should be taken into account when creating a new reading passage for speech/voice assessment. There also appears to be a lack of consensus regarding the terminology of speech-related concepts as well as the assessment methods, which in turn may influence the decisions taken when implementing new speech assessment materials. This consensus survey will be structured as follows: 1) Definitions of speech-related concepts* 2) Perceptual and objective speech measures* 3) Criteria for creating standard reading passages *questions in these sections will only be presented to participants with activities in speech and fluency disorders In light of the investigated topic and the targeted expert group, we hope to achieve our goal within three (max. four) rounds, between July 2020 and not later than February 2021. Each online survey will be available for 2-3 weeks for you to complete at your convenience and the first round will take about 30-40 minutes to complete (the following rounds will be shorter). None of the surveys will have to be completed in a single sitting, as you will be able to save your answers at any time to resume the questionnaire later. It is very important that participants complete the survey in each round. The reliability of the results could be compromised if participants drop out of the study before its completion. However, it is of course possible at any time to withdraw from the study. To reduce the likelihood of high drop-out rates affecting the outcome of this study, we ask you to only agree to participate if you think you will be available to complete all three to four rounds.
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| 4-7 | Tests on the spatial resolution of human voice directivity, TU Berlin, Germany Dear All, We propose a listening test to determine a perceptual threshold for the spatial resolution (in terms of order of spherical harmonics) of the human voice directivity. If you have confirmed normal hearing, we would like to ask you to take part in this listening test. It will take about 20-25 minutes. The sound stimuli of this listening test are binaural signals therefore please use headphones. Here is the link to the test: https://vc.users.ak.tu-berlin.de/ Simply follow the instructions on the screen. If you have any trouble with opening the link, please try another browser (Chrome, Firefox and Edge worked for us). If you still experience some issues, please contact us. The test is anonymous and respects the European General Data Protection Regulation. If you would like to know more about this project do not hesitate to contact us. Thank you in advance for your participation! Best regards, Paul Luizard Aurian Quelennec
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| 4-8 | MediaEval 2020 Registration Now Open Multimedia Evaluation Benchmark (MediaEval)
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| 4-9 | Delphi consensus survey - Developing reading passages for the assessment of speech and voice (update)
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| 4-10 | ACM ICMI CALL FOR BIDS 2023
ACM ICMI CALL FOR BIDS 2023 The Steering Board of the ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) invites proposals to host 25th Annual Conference, to be held between the end of September and mid-November 2023. Priority will be given for proposals hosted in Europe or Africa continents. Strong proposals from other regions are also welcome. ICMI 2018 was in Boulder, Colorado, USA, ICMI 2019 was in Suzhou, Jiangsu, China, and ICMI 2020 was recently held as a virtual conference (but originally planned to be in Utrecht, the Netherlands). The bidding process is done in two stages. During the first stage, the initial proposals will be reviewed by the steering committee to identify promising bids and request additional information if necessary. During the second stage, the revised proposals will be reviewed and the final selection. Evaluation Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (unordered): • Experience and reputation of General Chairs and Program Chairs • Local multimodal interaction community support • (Local) government and industry support • Support and opportunities for students • Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site • Suitability of proposed dates (with list of specific conflicts to avoid) • Adequacy of conference facilities for the anticipated number of attendees • Adequacy of accommodations and food services in a range of price categories and close to the conference facilities • Overall balance of budget projections • Geographical balance with regard to previous ICMI meetings All communications, including request for information and bid submission, should be sent to the ICMI Steering Board Chair (Yukiko Nakano, y.nakano@st.seikei.ac.jp). Important Dates For ICMI 2023 bids: • January 25, 2021 - Notify intention to submit proposal via email • February 11, 2021 - Draft proposals due • March 1, 2021 - Feedback to bidders • April 5, 2021 - Final bids due • April 26, 2021 - Bid selected Bid Content After the notification of intent, the steering board chair will share with you more details, including successful bids from previous years. The following questions have to be answered for the official bid (both draft and final proposals). Text in square brackets [] contains considerations to be taken into account. 1. Describe briefly the conference, including side events 2. Describe briefly the conference site. 3. What date do you consider? 4. What is the nearest (international) airport? 5. Please give price quotes for the cheapest roundtrip to the conference location from Frankfurt, London, New York, San Francisco, Beijing and Tokyo (assume one week of travel with a Saturday overnight stay) 6. What transportation should participants use from the airport to the conference site? 7. Does the conference site both have a large room for a maximum of 300 people and about 5 smaller rooms for a maximum of 30-70 people? Is there wireless connection available for attendees? What about audio-visual facilities?
8. What is the approximate room rate (single and double occupancy)? Is breakfast included? [Often all the attendees of ICMI stay at the same hotel. If this is your case, the conference chair should find a hotel that allows accommodation for the expected number of people. Booking rooms and meals in the same hotel as the conference rooms often helps reducing the overall costs.] 9. Catering, including breaks, receptions, banquet and entertainment. We encourage organizers to provide coffee breaks and lunches in order to promote community building and discussion 10. Which support can your department give for the organization of the conference (e.g., free secretarial assistance, facilities for on-line payment? 11. Which support can your department give during the conference (e.g., free secretarial assistance, PCs / Macs at the conference site)? 12. What are your plans for sponsorship? To which associations / companies / institutions do you plan to apply for financial assistance? What do you realistically expect to receive from them? What are your plans concerning student travel stipend program [A minimum of $5,000 should be reserved from each year's conference budget to support student travel from each of the three major geographic regions (Americas, Europe-Africa, Asia-Pacific), or $15,000 total. For example, if a grant for $15,000 is obtained from NSF to support U.S. student travel but there is no external funding for students from other continents, then an additional $10,000 of you budget should be set aside for students from the other two continents] 13. What actions will you take to make the conference cheaper for students? (e.g., seek financial support from other organizations, provide cheaper rooms)? What reduction do you realistically expect? 14. Provide the names of people who are foreseen or confirmed for the major Conference Committees: General Chairs, Program Chairs, Sponsorship Chair; volunteer labor, registration handling. One of the General Chairs and one of the Program Chairs should be identified as the lead, who will be the main point of contact for the ICMI steering committee. Describe any experience the team has had in organizing previous conferences and the number of participants at those conferences. 15. Local Multimodal Interaction community 16. How do you propose to run the paper reviewing process? Do you see any possible improvements? 17. How will you organize the content of the conference to ensure a high-quality and energetic exchange of information that includes timely topics and stimulating external speakers? Please be specific in your suggestions for how you would organize the main program and workshops/tutorials 18. Any other aspects that you may find relevant for the evaluation of your proposal Preparing a budget proposal Based on estimates from previous attendance, one might expect 250 participants to ICMI. Please, provide three budgets, one for 150 participants, a second for 200 participants and the last one for 250. Costs that will have to be covered include: • Rental of conference space and meeting rooms • AV equipment • Coffee breaks and possibly lunch • Registration desk/technical helpers (e.g., student volunteers) • Tutorials • Producing and printing the proceedings • 10% ACM fee • 15% contingency fund • Conference poster and advertising • Social banquet • Welcome reception • Lunch for ICMI board meeting
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| 4-11 | New Master curriculum integrating advanced study and research covering all areas of language science,Univ. of Paris, France The Paris Graduate School of Linguistics (PGSL) is a newly-formed Paris-area graduate program covering all areas of language science. It offers a comprehensive Master curriculum integrating advanced study and research, in close connection with PhD programs as well as with the Empirical Foundations of Linguistics consortium. Research plays a central part in the program, and students also take elective courses to develop an interdisciplinary outlook. Prior knowledge of French is not required. For more details, please see https://paris-gsl.org/index.html New funding opportunity: https://u-paris.fr/en/call-for-applications-international-students-miem-scholarship-program/ Application deadline : February 1st 2021 (program starting September 1st 2021) PGSL is funded by Smarts-UP (Student-centered iMproved, Active Research-based Training Strategy at Université de Paris) through the ANR SFRI grant « Grandes universités de recherche » (PIA3) 2020-2029.
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| 4-12 | Bids for ICMR 2023 The ICMR Steering Committee invites interested parties to submit proposals to
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| 4-13 | ACMMM 2021: Call for Grand Challenge Proposals ===============================================
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