Dear friends of ISCA,

Many of you will be on holidays, but the ISCApad is still active in providing you with the latest news from our community, as usual nicely compiled by Chris Wellekens. Most important is of course the news related to the upcoming Interspeech in Dublin, including its satellite events.

With respect to the Interspeech program, I would like to highlight in particular the following events:

• The opening ceremony on Monday August 21, where we will welcome the eight new ISCA fellows, and award a number of Scientific and Service Medals;

• The keynote talk by the recipient of the ISCA 2023 Medal for Scientific Achievement: Shrikanth (Shri) Narayanan, who received it for his sustained and diverse contributions to speech communication science and technology and its application to human-centered engineering systems;

• The keynote by Virginia Dignum on Tuesday August 22, on “the AI hype” – and how a need for responsible AI requires all to emphasize trust, cooperation, and common good;

• The debate session on Wednesday August 23 on how end-to-end approaches to speech technology impact our field, moderated by Roger Moore;

• The keynote by Martine Grice on Thursday August 24, exploring why and how intonational rises orient attention;

• A further panel session on assessing and mitigating AI bias in speech processing systems, nine special sessions and three challenges, demo and show-and-tell sessions, as well as overview talks on selected areas of our community;

• Events organized by the ISCA-SAC and ISCA-PECRAC addressing the needs of students and young researchers, and by our Diversity Committee making INTERSPEECH an even more inclusive event.

This will be my last message as your ISCA President. As you know, elections for the ISCA Board were held in April this year, and six members of the new Board were elected, whom we will welcome at the General Assembly taking place on Monday, August 21. The General Assembly will be the time when we will hand over the responsibilities to the new Board. Please join us and support your scientific association so that we can best serve all of you!

It was a pleasure to serve all of you in my ISCA Board roles, first as a conference coordinator, and last as the president. I wish the new Board all the best in supporting this vibrant community even better, with fresh ideas and initiatives.

I wish you a nice summer, and hope to see you all in Dublin, Ireland, for Interspeech 2023.

Sebastian Möller

ISCA President