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ISCApad #285 |
| Tuesday, March 08, 2022 by Chris Wellekens |
2 ISCA News
| 2-1 | Message from ISCA president Prof. Sebastian Möller
Dear friends of ISCA,
Many of us are going through hard times. After the Covid-19 pandemic has reached its latest omicron peak in many countries, with impact on our work and family lives, political issues have led to military actions in the center of Europe, causing death and damage more than 75 years after the end of World War II. ISCA stands close to its Ukrainian members, and is willing to help them to continue their scientific and educational activities. We are aware that our means are quite limited, but we would be happy to get in contact with members impacted from the war, in order to find out ways to improve their situation.
For ISCA, we have been fighting not only with technical problems but with personal absences, causing some delay to our usual processes.
The first good news is that we have a winner resulting from the bidding process for INTERSPEECH: INTERSPEECH 2025 will be held in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Congratulations to Odette Scharenborg, Khiet Truong and their entire team, and thanks a lot for supporting ISCA by taking over the organisation of this event!
Secondly, we have received a number of strong nominations for ISCA Fellows, which are currently being reviewed by the selection committee. In addition, proposals are still open for the ISCA Medalist (new deadline March 20). Members of the ISCA Advisory Committee (IAC) and the ISCA Board are also still invited to propose candidates for the ISCA Service Medal (same deadline, March 20).
Thirdly, we are still inviting applications for the new ISCA Conference Coordinator position which is expected to support ISCA and its Technical Committee in the scientific management of INTERSPEECH conferences. This additional person-power, together with better electronic tools and processes, will hopefully enable the ISCA Board to better fulfill its duties, and to provide an improved service to the community. We are fully aware that we are constantly facing email problems, are sometimes slow in taking decisions, and might even be object of spam and skim attacks. Be assured that ISCA works hard on resolving these problems and providing its service on a level you expect. Hopefully, we can come up with some initial results soon.
In the meanwhile, I point you to this month’s presentation of the SIG SLT (Special Interest Group on Spoken Language Translation), as well as to all other information kindly collected by Chris Wellekens in this ISCApad. Have a good read!
Sebastian Möller
ISCA President
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| 2-2 | ISCA Language SIGS ISCA supports speech communication research activities in various languages. The individual languages have equal interest, but they may involve have different technical or scientific problems. For example, some languages are tonal, while others are not; Some languages have only one writing system, while others have several. In the ISCA community, we have 6 language Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for Chinese, French, Italian, Iberian, Indian, and Russian. Each SIG is organised by researchers who speak the language of interest as L1 and others who have a technical or scientific interest in the language. Each SIG sponsors domestic and international research activities, and representative members of the SIGs attend a Lang SIG meeting every year during the INTERSPEECH conference. In this meeting, recent activities of each SIG are reported, and new ideas are exchanged. We also review what ISCA can do for the SIGs and what the SIGs can do for ISCA. Each SIG has its own web page, and you can visit the pages here. Prof. Nobuaki MINEMATSU The University of Tokyo Japan
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| 2-3 | ISCA Special Interest Group (SIG) 'Spoken Language Translation'
ISCA SIG “Spoken Language Translation” Aims. The SIG SLT covers all aspects of spoken language translation — simultaneous translation and interpretation, speech dubbing, speech-to-text translation, speech-to-speech translation, cross-lingual communication including paralinguistic, emotional or multimodal information, and related areas SIG SLT will (a) provide members of ISCA with a special interest in spoken language translation and its related areas with a means of exchanging news of recent research developments and other matters of interest in spoken language translation; (b) organize challenges and evaluation campaigns; (c) sponsor and organize the International Conference on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT), meetings, satellites, and tutorial workshops in spoken language translation, operating within the framework of ISCA's by-laws for SIGs; and (d) make available open-source code and data resources, best practices and tools, and evaluation metrics relevant to spoken language translation.
Motivation. Recent interest in speech translation and simultaneous translation by machine has been growing explosively, due to continued performance advances and a growing international need for simultaneous translation and interpretation, speech dubbing, speech-to-text translation, speech-to-speech translation, cross-lingual communication including paralinguistic, emotional or multimodal information, and related areas. The under-covered elements in the current research are, for instance, incremental simultaneous speech-to-speech translation, paralinguistic translation, speaking style translation across languages. The proposed SIG will be organized by the members who are interested in spoken language translation/interpretation from various related areas such as ASR, TTS, and MT. SIG SLT emerged from over two decades of organizing the International Conference on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) and its predecessor C-Star, scaling operations in response to significant growth in the field. The organizers of IWSLT and partners believe it is now time to join with ISCA by creating an ISCA SIG. IWSLT has a 15-year track record of profitability; it runs the premier benchmarking campaign on spoken language translation annually accompanied by an international scientific conference to present and discuss results.
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| 2-4 | ISCA hires a Conference coordinator The International Speech Communication (ISCA) [www.isca-speech.org) seeks application for a :
Conference Coordinator (f/m/d)
For a limited-term contract with 18h/week, with the perspective of extension towards an unlimited-term contract.
The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) is a scientific non-profit organization according to the French law 1901. The purpose of the association is to promote, in an international world-wide context, activities and exchanges in all fields related to speech communication science and technology. The association is aimed at all persons and institutions interested in fundamental research and technological development that aims at describing, explaining and reproducing the various aspects of human communication by speech, e.g. phonetics, linguistics, computer speech recognition and synthesis, speech compression, speaker recognition, aids to medical diagnosis of voice pathologies.
One of the core activities of ISCA is to ensure the continuous organization of its flagship conference, Interspeech. The conference is organized each year in a different country by a different team; it typically attracts 1500 or more participants from all over the world. The role of this newly-created position of conference coordinator is to ensure a smooth organization of the conference over the years, according to well-established standards, and taking into account the aims ISCA has with the conference.
The role requires – amongst others – to take over the lead for the following activities:
Required competences:
We are looking for a self-motivated person who is enthusiastic about the organization of international scientific events, and has excellent organizational and communication skills (mostly in English). The person does not need to have a scientific background in speech communication and technology, but should be able to understand the scientific background, as well as the aims ISCA has with the organization of Interspeech conferences. A proven expertise in the organization of large-scale events is a must, and of scientific events is a plus.
The job can be carried out remotely from any location. A flexible allocation of time over the year is required, depending on the status of preparations (the conference is typically organized in September, and there is an expected increase in activity from March to September). The willingness to physically attend preparatory meetings and the conference is required.
Deadline : 15 March 2022.
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| 2-5 | Extended nomination for ISCA Distinguished Lecturers Extended nomination for ISCA distinguished lecturers.
- a short biography of the candidate - a list of selected publications - reasons of nomination - a website of the nominee, if possible - topics/titles of up to three possible lectures that the nominee could give A template form for nomination is available on the ISCA website. Please note that the nominator must ensure the candidate is willing to serve if elected. Also, nominations from previous years will be only considered if updated. Finally, self-nominations are permitted, but must include a letter of support from an ISCA Fellow or Board Member.
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| 2-6 | nominations for the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement Dear ISCA members, ISCA is inviting nominations for the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement and has extended the deadline to March 20, 2022. The ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement recognizes and honors an individual each year who has made extraordinary contributions to the field of speech communication science and technology. Any ISCA member can make a nomination. All nominations for ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement should be submitted to the ISCA Secretary at secretariat@isca-speech.org by March 20, 2022, using the nomination form. The ISCA Board will select the winner and announce them in the next ISCApad. Unsuccessful candidates of the previous year(s) must be re-nominated to qualify for candidacy; thus, we ask proposers of candidates in previous years to re-consider nomination. Best regards,
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| 2-7 | ISCA needs your help! ISCA needs your help!
For the smooth running of our organization and our flagship conference Interspeech, we’ve been relying on lots of different electronic tools. Unfortunately, many of these tools are outdated and/or did not scale up with the growth of our community. Moreover, our website and communication channels get do with a make-over.
In order to improve the services for the benefit of the entire community, we are looking for volunteers who would like to help with the task of planning a new IT infrastructure for ISCA. This infrastructure might include the review system, the reviewer database, membership administration, web site, communication tools, as well as other administrative IT infrastructures still to be defined. Requirements should be collected from members of the ISCA board, past and present Interspeech organisers, and our community, and they should be mapped to the possibilities ISCA has, considering also personal issues such as frequently-changing board members, absence of continuous IT support, etc.
Would you like to help in the planning of the new IT infrastructure? Please send an email to president@isca-speech.org indicating why you are interested, and a little bit of your personal background relevant to this activity.
Thanks! Odette & Sebastian
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| 2-8 | ISCA-PEDRAC: a new service of ISCA. ISCA-PECRAC (Postdoc & Early Career Researcher Advisory Committee) is pleased to invite postdoc & early career researchers to participate in the 1st Early Career Researcher Annual Gathering @ Interspeech 2021 (online this year).
The Early Career Researcher Annual Gathering aims to provide an opportunity for postdoc & early career researchers to meet and communicate at INTERSPEECH. In the framework of ISCA-PECRAC, we would like:
1st Early Career Researcher Annual Gathering @ Interspeech 2021 Time : August 30 at 18:00 - Brno time (preliminary slot) Location : Online Program :
Contacts: Yaru Wu (yaru.wu@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr) Berrak Sisman (berrak_sisman@sutd.edu.sg)
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| 2-9 | ISCA social networks We encourage all members tokeep contact with ISCA via our social nets. Also you will bde kept informed about all events on our website. This is particularly important in this time where due to the coronavirus, many modifications may be brought to the conference.
ISCA Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/iscaspeech/ ISCA Twitter : https://twitter.com/ISCAFOX ISCA SAC Student Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/groups/98794207409/ website : www.isca-speech.org
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| 2-10 | Women in Speech Research
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| 2-11 | Code-of-Conduct for Conference and Workshop Attendees Code-of-Conduct for Conference and Workshop Attendees
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| 2-12 | Code-of-Ethics for Authors (updated) Code of Ethics for Authors
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| 2-13 | Reminder ISCA International virtual seminars REMINDER: ISCA INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL SEMINARS Now's the time of year to start organising your seminar programme for the coming academic year. Don't forget that ISCA has recruited 17 leading researchers in Speech Communication prepared to give seminars on line. For instance, Gustav Henter of KTH Stockholm comments: As the person responsible for seminars at the Division of Speech, Music and Hearing (TMH) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, I would like to thank you for the excellent initiative to set up ISCA international virtual seminars during the pandemic. Thus far our division has made use of this scheme on three occasions: The idea to invite distinguished speakers virtually has been widely appreciated by the department. It is likely that we may schedule further virtual seminar from your pool for our autumn semester seminars as well. For details, follow the entry Online Seminars in the left menu on the ISCA home page, https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb
-- ************************ Professor Phil Green SpandH Computer Science University of Sheffield ************************
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| 2-14 | IEEE SPS ME-UYR (Mentoring Experiences for Underrepresented Young Researchers)
Friends, The IEEE SPS ME-UYR (Mentoring Experiences for Underrepresented Young Researchers) steering committee is proposing a new mentoring program for young IEEE SPS researchers and would like to invite you to join as potential student mentors. The program has been started this year to address a critical diversity issue in IEEE as well as other spoken language processing and signal processing organizations: the low percentage of women and underrepresented minorities. The number of female researchers in spoken language processing and signal processing within the IEEE community is about 10%. The numbers for other underrepresented minorities in other technical areas within signal processing are similar or even worse. To address this imbalance, this new program will connect young researchers from underrepresented groups with established researchers in signal processing to support a student research project coordinated with the mentor which is of significant interest to both. Each project will last for 9 months. The young researchers will also be supported with travel funds to attend one conference or workshop after the project. An event in conjunction with the annual ICASSP conference will also be supported for the students to bring students and mentors together to share their experiences. In this message, the ME-UYR committee is first recruiting potential mentors interested in increasing diversity within IEEE SPS and identifying their areas of research interest. We will send out a call to potential student participants asking them to sign up for an online 'students meet mentors' event which we will also invite you to. This online event will be designed to match students with mentors in their field. Once you have accepted one of the students as your mentee the two of you will write a one-page proposal together describing a research plan of interest to you both and submit it to our evaluation committee for review (the deadline is December 1, 2021). This event will be held on October 28 at 11am Eastern Time. Please send an email to sp-me-uyr@listserv.ieee.org to register for the event. Once mentors and students have been connected, the 9-month research mentoring projects will begin. We expect the first ME-UYR program to support about 12 projects in IEEE-SPS. A more detailed description of the program can be found here: https://signalprocessingsociety.org/community-involvement/me-uyr-mentoring-experiences-underrepresented-young-researchers-program . As a highly respected researcher in IEEE SPS organizations, we would very much like you to participate with us in this program. The lasting benefits to young diversity students themselves as well as to IEEE itself and the signal processing societies are extremely significant, so we would really appreciate your acceptance! Please respond by October 20 if you can join. Sincerely yours, IEEE SPS ME-UYR Committee Irene Amerini Oliver Cossairt Mark Hasegawa-Johnson Julia Hirschberg Ina Kodrasi Arvind Rao Tirza Routtenberg Odette Scharenborg
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| 2-15 | Publications and Videos of Speech Prosody 2020 The papers are already publicly available, at https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/SpeechProsody_2020/ . To also see the videos, you can register for the conference, for only 4000 Yen, at https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/sp2020_registration/vp/ .
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| 2-16 | Reminder: Nominations for ISCA Medals and Fellowship. REMINDER: ISCA Fellow Nominations
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| 2-17 | Call for reviewers Interspeech 2022 Nominations to be a reviewer for Interspeech 2022 are now open. If you would like to review for Interspeech, or if you have a colleague or former student who would be qualified, please nominate yourself, your colleague, or your former student at https://isca-speech.org/iscareviewers/reviewer.php.
Interspeech reviewers must have a Ph.D. in an area of research related to speech science and/or speech technology. Nominations must include a link to an online CV; nominations will be reviewed by the ISCA Technical Committee.
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| 2-18 | Prix de thèse AFCP 2021 APPEL A CANDIDATURES
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| 2-19 | Videos at Interspeech 2021 The video recordings of Interspeech 2021 were processed and are currently being uploaded online. You can find all the videos at
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