Dear ISCA members,

This is my first time to write to you as the new president of ISCA. Only 2 weeks ago we finished a wonderful Interspeech, our association’s flagship conference, held in Dublin, Ireland. It was amazing to see so many well-attended posters, sessions, and panel discussions and of course the mentoring and student events and social events. I hope you all learned a lot and definitely as important: I hope you made new connections and collaborations, and friendships.

I want to thank Naomi Harte, Gareth Jones, and Julie Carson-Berndsen, the three amazing General co-chairs of Interspeech 2023, the equally amazing technical program chairs Simon King, Petra Wagner, and Kate Knill, and ALL of the other people in their team who worked day and night for months, years, to give us this amazing event. My thank you definitely also includes the reviewers: we will not be able to hold Interspeech, or any workshop or conference actually, if we do not have reviewers. If you are not yet a reviewer, and fulfil the criteria of becoming one (https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/conferences), please sign up via our website (https://isca-speech.org/iscareviewers/reviewer.php). A further thank you to our members of the ISCA Advisory Council who provide the ISCA board with their opinions and advice on many different topics whenever we ask for them (e.g., regarding conference bids, elections, proposed changes to the by-laws, etc), throughout the year. A final thank you to Chris Wellekens, who for so many years now, has dedicated some of his time to put together this ISCAPad.

At Interspeech we also celebrated the new ISCA Medalist for Scientific Achievement, eight new ISCA fellows, three best student paper awards, a best journal paper award and a best poster award at the Young Female Researchers in Speech Science and Technology Workshop. Congratulations to all!

On Tuesday August 22, we held our yearly General Assembly, where I officially took over the presidency from Sebastian Möller, who led our association for these past two years. I worked with Sebastian on the ISCA board for the past 6 years, and have seen how tirelessly he worked and how dedicated he was to making ISCA a better association and particularly his focus on professionalising the software supporting ISCA and Interspeech. It was an absolute pleasure to work with Sebastian. Sebastian has kindly agreed to continue to help with the new software until everything is up and running, including our new website, which we hope to launch later this year. Sebastian, thank you so much for all you have done and your willingness to help with the final steps of the software transition! Related to our new website, we are in the process of rethinking our logo. Watch this space for updates!

The General Assembly was also the point where four former ISCA board members stepped down: two former presidents, Sebastian Möller, and John Hansen, and Meg Zellers and Torbjorn Svendsen. I know that I am not the only one on the ISCA board who will miss their energy, dedication and vast knowledge about different aspects of running our association. However, I’m also very excited to work with four new members on our board: Esther Klabbers, Emily Mower-Provost, Tom Backstrom, and Beena Ahmed.

One of my goals for ISCA is to further professionalise the software supporting ISCA and our administrative staff. Another important goal falls under the umbrella of communication. We will focus on an improved communication within ISCA to aid community building, and strengthening of the ties with external associations and related research areas. A third topic close to my heart is strengthening the speech science part in ISCA and at Interspeech. The beauty of ISCA and Interspeech in my opinion is that it encompasses all areas of speech research, which allows us to learn from each other and to together bring our understanding of speech science and technology further than would be possible without the other field. I truly hope that the effort of strengthening the speech science pillar in ISCA will be a community effort. Finally, we will focus on furthering the integration of people from minorities and geographically distant areas into our association. ISCA stands for inclusivity and respectful treatment of everyone by everyone.

Although Interspeech 2023, Dublin has only just finished, the ISCA board is already looking forward to the next Interspeech, which will be held in Jerusalem, Israel. More on Interspeech 2024 in the next ISCAPads.

I am looking forward to serving our wonderful community and help further build it. If you want to contribute in any way, have questions, or want to voice issues, please contact me via e-mail.

Odette Scharenborg

ISCA president