Dear friends of ISCA,

I hope that you had a good start into the new year. 2022 will be the third year affected by the Covid19 pandemic, which already has – and will continue to have – a significant impact on our scientific life. Visibly, 2020 was the first year with a fully virtual Interspeech conference, and 2021 the first year with a fully hybrid Interspeech. While both experiences were very satisfactory (given the circumstances), the dynamic situation does not allow us to disentangle pandemic effects from the general development of our community, such as the rise in paper submissions.

During the preparation of Interspeech 2021 in Brno, the organisers identified a strong need for more constant support of the technical program of Interspeech. To address this aim, the ISCA board has decided to create a new position, part time but open ended. As soon as this position is advertised, we hope that you will circulate it to persons who might be qualified and willing to take over this task. In addition, a task force will review the electronic tools which are currently used by ISCA, and propose new structures and tools. If you are interested to join the task force, feel free to contact me.

In the last issue of ISCApad, we started a new series highlighting the activities of our SIGs. Below, you will find an introduction to the language-related SIGs by the board member who is responsible, Nobuaki Minematsu, as well as a message from Nigel Ward on the Speech Prosody Special Interest Group (SproSIG).

I wish you all the best for the new year, and hope that you manage to navigate successfully through these unstable times, both on a professional and a personal level. Have a good read of ISCApad, as usual very nicely compiled by Chris Wellekens.

Sebastian Möller

ISCA president