Press Release - Immediate
Paris, France, January 24, 2018

ELRA and LDC partner on a joint distribution of Language Resources

ELRA and LDC are pleased to announce the release of
1) three corpora from the 2007 CoNLL Shared Task, consisting of dependency treebanks, used as part of the CoNLL 2007 shared task on multi-lingual dependency parsing and the domain adaptation track. The source data in the treebanks consists for the most part of various texts (e.g., textbooks, news, literature) annotated in dependency format, and
2) one TRAD Chinese-French Parallel Text, which includes French translations of a subset of approximately 10,000 Chinese words from LDC?s GALE Phase 1 Chinese Blog Parallel.

These packages can be found in the ELRA and LDC catalogues under the following references:

2007 CoNLL Shared Task - Basque, Catalan, Czech & Turkish  
ISLRN: 769-620-932-723-2
ELRA ID: ELRA-W0121
LDC ID: LDC2018T06

2007 CoNLL Shared Task - Greek, Hungarian and Italian   
ISLRN: 270-733-242-642-3
ELRA ID: ELRA-W0122
LDC ID: LDC2018T07

2007 CoNLL Shared Task ? Arabic & English
ISLRN: 505-782-255-628-8
ELRA ID: ELRA-W0123
LDC ID: LDC2018T08

TRAD Chinese-French Parallel Text ? Blog
ISLRN: 713-266-631-883-0
ELRA ID: ELRA-W0125
LDC ID: LDC2018T02

***About CoNLL and the 2007 shared task***
The Conference on Computational Natural Language Learning (CoNLL) is accompanied every year by a shared task intended to promote NLP applications and evaluate them in a standard setting. In 2007, the shared task was devoted to the parsing of syntactic dependencies using corpora from up to thirteen languages. The task aimed to define and extend the then-current state of the art in dependency parsing, a technology that complemented previous tasks by producing a different kind of syntactic description of input text. The 2007 shared task also included a domain adaptation track for English.
http://www.signll.org/conll/ and http://www.conll.org/previous-tasks/.

***About PEA TRAD project ***
PEA-TRAD (Translation as a Support for Document Analysis) is a project supported by the French Ministry of Defense (DGA) whose purpose was to develop speech-to-speech translation technology for multiple languages (e.g., Arabic, Chinese, Pashto) from a variety of domains.
More on the PEA TRAD project: http://www.elra.info/en/projects/archived-projects/pea-trad/.

*** About ELRA ***
The European Language Resources Association (ELRA) is a non-profit making organisation founded by the European Commission in 1995, with the mission of providing a clearing house for language resources and promoting Human Language Technologies (HLT).
To find out more about ELRA and its respective catalogue, please visit: http://www.elra.info and http://catalogue.elra.info

*** About LDC ***
The Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) is an open consortium of universities, libraries, corporations and research laboratories that creates and distributes linguistic resources for language-related education, research and technology development.
To find out more about LDC and its respective catalogue, please visit: https://www.ldc.upenn.edu and https://catalog.ldc.upenn.edu     

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2018 MICROSOFT AI RESIDENCY PROGRAM

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/microsoft-ai-residency-program/

The Microsoft AI Residency program invites applications for its 2018 program.  Microsoft AI Residents will develop AI expertise by working alongside prominent researchers and engineers in either Redmond, WA, or Cambridge, UK.  Residents will gain skills and hands-on experience working on practical AI and machine learning problems that help tackle some of society’s toughest challenges. The ideal candidate will have a passion for leveraging their expertise from computer science work and/or other technical fields to solve real-world challenges by applying AI and machine learning.  Applicants are not expected to be AI experts.

In this year-long program, selected residents will:

• Gain real-world, hands-on industry experience while working with Microsoft researchers, engineers, and product teams.
• Learn about deploying machine learning solutions at scale across a range of areas such as healthcare, entertainment, and productivity.
• Benefit from a rich program of training and mentorship.
• Be part of a vibrant AI and machine learning community in Cambridge, UK, and Redmond, WA.
• Receive competitive compensation and be encouraged to apply for a regular position at Microsoft at the end the residency program.

Eligibility criteria

• BSc, MSc, and PhD graduates with substantial coursework in, but not limited to: computer science, electrical engineering, data science, mathematics, physics, economics, human-computer interaction, and computational biology.
• Experience developing in at least one high-level language such as Python or C/C++/C#.
• Experience with machine learning techniques or deep learning frameworks is desirable.
• Enthusiasm to move into the field is essential.
• Ability to work in a highly collaborative and interdisciplinary environment.
• Strong communication skills.

Important dates:

• February 28, 2018: Candidate selection begins; recommended deadline for submitting an application.
• March 30, 2018: Application submission closes.
• April – May, 2018: Notification of admission.
• September 2018 – August 2019: Residency program.

We welcome applications from graduating students, as well as from people working now or with other experiences.  Where required, Microsoft will support the immigration process for eligible applicants.

For more information, or to apply, see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/microsoft-ai-residency-program/

For questions, contact AIResidency@microsoft.com

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Modeling Virtual Coaches

The European Horizon-2020 project Council of Coaches aims to develop a tool in which virtual embodied coaches form a team of experts that can discuss amongst themselves and with the user how the user could improve his healthy lifestyle behaviors. The project combines state of the art 3D Virtual Avatars with language and reasoning technology and applies this to the area of lifestyle and behavior change coaching.

The goal of research is to design, implement and evaluate user interaction with the team of virtual agents, the council of coaches (Home Interface) and one-on-one interaction with a single coach (Mobile Interface). In particular it focuses on

1. Modelling coaches with their own specific agenda and behaviour style aiming at creating unique social relationships with users.
2. Adapting virtual coaches? behavior to ensure that user maintains his involvement in the relationship with the coaches.

Specific attention will be given to the development of virtual coaches with a wide variety of behavioural characteristics and personality traits. Several studies have shown how low level features such as behaviour expressivity and high level characteristic (e.g. personality traits ) affect user?s involvement in their interaction with the virtual characters and impact his performances (McRorie et al., 2011) (Paiva et al., 2017)).

The work in this research will make use of and build upon the GRETA/VIB platform developed at UPMC (Pecune et al., 2014) for multimodal behaviour generation and for visualizing virtual coaches.

To apply, send a CV and names of reference to    catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr

H2020 Council of Coaches

Context:

The GRETA/VIB platform is developed at CNRS-ISIR (Pécune et al, 2014). It simulates virtual characters able to communicate with humans in real-time. It is endowed with socio-emotional capabilities. The control of the character is done through two specific languages at the communicative intention level and at the multimodal behavior one. The platform includes several tools to create multimodal behaviors.

The GRETA/VIB platform is used within the European Horizon-2020 project Council of Coaches which aims to develop a tool in which virtual embodied coaches form a team of experts that can discuss amongst themselves and with the user how the user could improve his healthy lifestyle behaviors. The project combines state of the art 3D Virtual characters with language and reasoning technology and applies this to the area of lifestyle and behavior change coaching.

Job Description:

We are looking for an engineer knowledgeable in 3D virtual environment. S/he will participate to Council of Coaches project. Her/his role will be:

-          Port the Greta/VIB platform onto Android mobile and VR headset.

-          Participate to development of computational model of agent?s multimodal behaviors

-          Integrate software modules within the VIB/Greta platform and/or within a bigger software system developed within the H2020 project Coach Council.

-          Participate to developers meetings (online and on site) of the H2020 project Coach Council

Profile: Engineer in computer science, Master, PhD

skills:

• Programming languages and standards: Java, C#, C++, XML, Ogre 3D

Mastered skills:

• The ideal candidate will have solid software development, testing and integration skills
• English (written and oral)

Project Length: 1 year position renewable

Place: ISIR - UPMC

Stipend: depends on applicant qualification

Contact: Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS-ISIR; catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr

To apply, send a CV, names of reference, master grades (for Master applicants) to    catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr

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AIRBUS, in collaboration with IRIT, ENAC and SAFETY DATA-CFH, is launching a challenge on automatic speech recognition of English Air Traffic Control (ATC) communications.

For more information: https://aigym.airbus.com/challenges/59bbf004dce682131435fe9c/

Registration is open, please the email see below.

Regards

The challenge team

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We are planning to edit a book from a repute press on Human Computer Interaction.

If you are interested to submit a full chapter, please send a tentative title, authors list with mail id and abstract of the chapter within 250words by 30th April 2018 through this link: goo.gl/jJbLgD



We will make the tentative tabel of content based on those abstracts.

Once the book proposal got accepted we will inform you all the details to write the full chapter of 15-20 pages.



Topics include (but are not limited to):

Innovative interaction techniques
Multimodal interaction
Speech interaction
Graphic interaction
Natural language interaction
Interaction in mobile and embedded systems
Interface design and evaluation methodologies
Design and evaluation of innovative interactive systems
User interface prototyping and management systems
Ubiquitous computing
Wearable computers
Pervasive computing
Affective computing
Empirical studies of user behaviour
Empirical studies of programming and software engineering
Computer supported cooperative work
Computer mediated communication
Virtual reality
Mixed and augmented Reality
Intelligent user interfaces
Presence
Intelligent tutoring, coaching and debugging systems
Interactive decision support systems
Agent-based computing, agent models, co-ordination and communication
Human language technologies and machine learning in interactive systems
Knowledge acquisition, discovery, modelling and management
Peer to peer communication between intelligent systems
Ontologies, knowledge technologies, semantic web systems
Human-Computer Interaction theory - e.g. user models, cognitive systems
Thanks again.

Cordially

Pr. Med Salim BOUHLEL
Head of the Research Lab: SETIT ( Sfax University )
President of the Tunisian Association Human-Machine Interaction
GSM +216 20 20 00 05

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Proposals for Speech Prosody 2020 are now open to SProSIG members. 

Members of SProSIG who are interested in organizing Speech Prosody 2020 are requested to submit documents explaining their proposals to SProSIG officers (Keikichi Hirose <hirose@gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp> and Mark Hasegawa-Johnson <jhasegaw@illinois.edu>) before July 31, 2018. 

Proposals should follow the format provided in the bidding template; if you are interested in submitting a bid, please contact SProSIG President Keikichi Hirose <hirose@gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp> for a copy of the bidding template.

On the last day of Speech Prosody 2018, Poznan (June 16), we will have a special session 'SProSIG: presentation of next SP,? where Speech Prosody 2020 bidders are invited to make presentations on their bids.  Though the presentation is not a mandatory condition for bidding, we strongly encourage bidders to use this chance to communicate the content of your bid to the SProSIG membership.  If you plan to make presentations on your bids, but have not contacted us yet, please contact Keikichi Hirose and Mark Hasegawa-Johnson as soon as possible.

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The Institute of Digital Sciences, Management and Cognition at the University of Lorraine
(Nancy, France) opens a new Masters program in Natural Language Processing and Data
Science - Computer Science, Speech, Language, and Knowledge Representation

http://institut-sciences-digitales.fr/idmc-master-degree-in-natural-language-processing/

Do you want to become an expert in Deep Neural Networks, Logic, Speech Processing,
Information Retrieval, Knowledge Representation, ? all of this for Natural Language?
Here's your chance!

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is at the crossroads of linguistics, computer science,
and artificial intelligence. We propose a modern curriculum which combines different
approaches covering both theoretical and applied perspectives.

The program includes a hands-on project in each semester. It ends with a 6-month paid
internship in a company or a research lab.

See the course description below.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can apply for the 1st year (M1) or for directly entering the 2nd year (M2).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Language
-------------
All courses are taught in English (except the 'French for non-native speakers' course).


Fees
-------
The University of Lorraine is publicly funded and therefore offers tuition-free education
for all students including students from both inside and outside EU/EEA/EFTA countries.
The only student expenditures are a nominal semester fee of about 600 euros which
includes health insurance. Nancy?s high quality of life goes hand-in-hand with a low cost
of living.


Why Nancy?
---------------
Nancy is a center of excellence for NLP!

1/Two important research centers:
- LORIA, the computer science research laboratory (http://www.loria.fr/en/)
- ATILF the linguistics research laboratory (http://www.atilf.fr/)

Both research units participate in many national and international research projects.
Their members are highly visible in the international community and regularly publish in
the most prestigious conferences and journals in the field.

2/ The University of Lorraine participates in two Erasmus Mundus Masters funded by the
European Union :
- Erasmus Mundus Master Language and Communication Technology (http://lct-master.org/)
- Erasmus Mundus Master EMLex (https://www.emlex.phil.fau.eu/)


Why NLP?
--------------
Natural Language Processing is a rapidly expanding field.

With the proliferation of digital data, there is a massive need for well-trained
engineers and researchers able to exploit this data for commercial (e-commerce,
recommendation systems, translation, etc) and socio-political (e-learning, opinion
mining, behavioral prediction, etc.) purposes.

Start-ups, small firms with strong R&D profiles and large companies (e.g., in France,
Airbus, Thales, EDF, Orange) are looking for scientists and engineers who can contribute
to the development of systems capable of managing and exploiting textual data.

The GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) are hiring intensively in both the
NLP and the Speech processing domains.

The need for PhD candidates is also strong as shown by the many PhD scholarships offered
by both academic and industrial players.


Contacts
------------
Head of the MSc program:
        Maxime Amblard <maxime.amblard@univ-lorraine.fr>
Secretary:
        Karine Weisse <karine.weisse@univ-lorraine.fr>
Location of the courses :
        École des Mines (Artem Campus, Tram stop 'Blandan')
        http://www.alliance-artem.fr/


Application
---------------
The application file is available here:
https://ecandidat.univ-lorraine.fr

More information:
http://institut-sciences-digitales.fr/application-process-nlp-master-degree/#application


Academic Year 2018-2019
-----------------------------------
From September 3rd to 13th, 2018: Refresher courses in mathematics (probability theory,
statistics) and computer science (algorithms, programming)

M1:
        1st semester from September 17th to January 11th
        2nd semester from January 14th to June 6th
M2:
        1st semester from September 17th to February 15th
        Internship from February to August


In brief
----------
? A program with strong national and international visibility
? Taught entirely in English
? A high quality research environment with two research centers covering a wide range of
disciplines (linguistics, computer science, speech and language processing) and
applications (Human-Machine Interfaces, Speech Processing, Knowledge Retrieval,
Statistical Machine Translation, etc.)
? Studies in a vibrant, human-sized city
? Studies at a low cost (Tuition fees at around 600 euros per year incl. health insurance)


Course Description
---------------------------
M1 1st Semester
---------------------------
PROBABILITIES, STATISTICS AND ALGORITHMS FOR AI
        ? Elementary mathematical tools, statistics, algorithms to define and solve
artificial intelligence problems
        ? Case studies covering both theoretical and practical aspects

CORPUS DESIGN AND ACQUISTION
        ? Written corpora
        ? Speech corpora

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
        ? Collection, analysis and formalization of customers' needs
        ? Software design and development
        ? Functional analysis and specifications
        ? Project management

LINGUISTICS FOR NLP (1)
        ? Methods for Natural Language Processing
        ? Phonology
        ? Morphology

PROJECT AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Hands-on project
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M1 2nd Semester
---------------------------
MACHINE LEARNING AND SEMANTIC WEB
        ? Machine learning theory
        ? Data mining
        ? Knowledge retrieval

FORMAL TOOLS
        ? Logic
        ? Formal languages
        ? Calculability and complexity

DATA PROCESSING
        ? Storage and retrieval
        ? Data analysis

LINGUISTICS FOR NLP (2)
        ? Lexicology: lexical units and phraseology
        ? Syntax
        ? Semantics

PROJECT AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Hands-on project
        ? Scientific communication
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M2 1st Semester
---------------------------
DEEP LEARNING AND DATA MINING
        ? Neural networks, Deep neural networks
        ? Data mining (structured data and text)
        ? Collaborative filtering

TEXT AND SPEECH PROCESSING
        ? Processing textual data
        ? Speech processing
        ? Terminology and ontology

NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND DISCOURSE
        ? Application to text
        ? Computational semantics
        ? Discourse and Dialog modeling

LEXICONS AND GRAMMARS FOR NLP
        ? Diachronic and synchronic lexicology
        ? Lexical resources
        ? Syntactic framework

PROJECTS AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE
        ? Software project
        ? Law and ethics
        ? Research methods
        ? Professional integration
        ? Foreign language (French)

---------------------------
M2 2nd Semester
---------------------------
Paid internship (company or research lab)

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CLARIN ERIC & ELRA enter a Collaboration Agreement

The European Language Resource Association (ELRA) is pleased to announce the signature of a Collaboration Agreement with CLARIN ERIC.

The Agreement covers several spheres of collaboration:
?    Sharing Metadata and Data
?    Business Development
?    Education and Training
?    Lobbying Activities
?    Team up in project proposals

The two organizations share overlapping and complementary activities for what concerns Language Resources, their usage and their users, but also the domains, Language and Speech Technologies for both, Social Sciences and the Humanities for CLARIN ERIC.
Reaching out the different communities of LR users in the academia and in the industry and building connections are among the major benefits expected from this collaboration.

About CLARIN ERIC
CLARIN ERIC is the European Research Infrastructure for Language Resources and Technology. CLARIN is a networked federation of language data repositories, service centres and centres of expertise. CLARIN makes digital Language Resources available to scholars, researchers, students and citizen-scientists from all disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences, through single sign-on access. CLARIN offers long-term solutions and technology services for deploying, connecting, analyzing and sustaining digital language data and tools. CLARIN supports scholars who want to engage in cutting edge data-driven research, contributing to a truly multilingual European Research Area.
To find out more about CLARIN ERIC, please visit the website: https://www.clarin.eu/
Contact: clarin@clarin.eu

About ELRA
The European Language Resources Association (ELRA) is a non-profit-making organisation founded by the European Commission in 1995, with the mission of providing a clearing house for Language Resources and promoting Human Language Technologies. Language Resources covering various fields of HLT (including Multimodal, Speech, Written, Terminology) and a great number of languages are available from the ELRA catalogue. ELRA's strong involvement in the fields of Language Resources  and Language Technologies is also emphasized at the LREC conference, organized every other year since 1998.
To find out more about ELRA, please visit the website: http://www.elra.info
Contact: info@elda.org

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