On behalf of the ISCA board, I am sending all best wishes for a Happy and Prosperous New Year 2019! (even if this is the end of Jan. J!)

As we enter 2019, it is maybe useful to look back and remind ourselves of memories of past events like the successful INTERSPEECH 2018 in Hyderabad, India (the first time a major speech conference has taken place in India), and to look forward to our next INTERSPEECH 2019 taking place in Graz, Austria (https://www.interspeech2019.org/; that's Austria, Austria, Austria!) . The full paper submission deadline is approaching on March 29, 2019 and we all very much hope to see you in Graz this September 15-19, 2019!

I will also add there are a number of Special Sessions & Challenges which have been recently posted for you to consider in your submissions, so please check these out (the Interspeech-2019 Organizing Committee has received many applications and these are the final selections, which will help shape the technical program for IS-19):

https://www.interspeech2019.org/program/special_sessions_and_challenges/

January is also the time for nominations for ISCA Fellow! Please consider nominating one of your colleagues who has made significant contributions to the field of speech communications – including science and technology domains! Nomination forms and information is available at this location:

https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/honors/fellows

We are also encouraging you to consider hosting/inviting one of our ISCA Distinguished Lecturers: Prof. Takayuki Arai(Professor, Sophia University, Japan)  and Dr. Daniel Hirst, (Directeur de Recherche Emeritus, CNRS & Aix-Marseille University, France) to visit your university to give a talk! We especially encourage schools or regions which may not have as many visitors/conferences in the field of speech communications to send a request. More information is located at:

https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/distinguished-lecturers

(if you wish to be considered for an ISCA Distinguished Lecturer, the deadline for nominations is Jan. 31^st (this week!)

Also, the ISCA Board has been working to strengthen our commitment to diversity, which includes gender, ethnicity, regional, and science/technology. With respect to gender, ISCA is announcing a new initiative for WomenNspeech (https://isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/diversity?id=264) which we are hopeful will help those organizing workshops/conferences, those seeking to expand educational support based on Distinguished Lecturers, and finally those involved in either faculty search for recent graduates or awards recognition. Please check out the newly released ISCA website for more information!! (and contact info!).  

Finally, we welcome all comments and feedback – as the ISCA Board is here to serve and enhance the speech communication society through our membership. The ISCA Board encourages you to get involved and actively engage in the various discussions on how to further improve our association.

My best wishes for a productive, safe, and prosperous year 2019!

John Hansen, ISCA President

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 Tenth Christian Benoît Award conferred by the International Speech Communication Association  and the Association Francophone de la Communication Parlée
  Deadline May 15, 2019
 
The Christian Benoît Award has been conferred periodically by the Association Christian Benoit until 2017. In 2018, the oversight of this Award was assumed  by ISCA and sponsored jointly by both ISCA and AFCP. It is awarded through a competitive nomination and review process to promising young scientists in the domain of SPEECH COMMUNICATION to further their career in the field. The focus of the award’s research topic may emphasize basic science or applied research projects.
 
The Award provides the elected scientist with financial support for the development of a personal short-term research project that:  (1) illustrates concretely the achievements of her/his research work; (2) could help in promoting his/her work in the scientific community, institutions and grant agencies in their geographical region/country; (3) gives an overall view of the state of the art in the particular research domain.  The proposed research project can take on the form of a demonstration, a technical product/system, or of a pedagogical multi-media product (movie, website, interactive software…).
 
The Award is valued at 7,500 Euros(*)
 
The commitments of the elected scientist who receives the award are: -- to attend the Interspeech-2019 Conference in Graz, Austria -- to deliver the final product of the project within 2 years -- to present her/his results at a future ISCA-endorsed event, specific to the research domain of the applicant.
 
In the application, the candidate should provide -- a statement of research interests (2 pages max), -- a detailed curriculum vitae including a list of the most relevant publications for the project. -- a description of the proposed short-term research project (5 to 15 pages max). The description should include a presentation of the scientific and/or pedagogical objectives and the methodological aspects, a link to the former research work of the applicant, and a detailed description of the provisional budget.
 
Applications will be evaluated by an international committee including experts in the field of Speech Communication and representatives of the institutions supporting the award.
 
Applications should be sent to gerard.bailly@gipsa-lab.fr before Monday May 15, 2019 Electronic submissions are mandatory
 
The successful candidate will be notified by June 15, 2019. The Award will be conferred at the Interspeech-2019 Conference in Graz, Austria (www.interspeech2019.org)
 
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* 3,500 Euros will be given immediately; with the remaining 4,000 Euros  available on reception of the multimedia project by the chair of the ISCA Award committee. Travel and registration costs necessary to attend the Interspeech 2019 Conference will have to be paid from this grant.
** For details about the Association Christian Benoît and the past awardees of the Christian Benoît Award see http://www.gipsa-lab.fr/acb/

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Election of members for the Board of ISCA (2019-2023)

[8-Dec-2019] The ISCA Board currently has 14 members from 8 countries (see full list below). Members are elected to the Board for a period of four years and no member may serve on the Board for more than two consecutive terms. The following Board member will have served for two consecutive terms in August, Satoshi Nakamura, and thus will be retiring.

According to the ISCA by-laws, elections to the Board will take place in April-May 2019. We invite nominations from the ISCA membership. Each nomination requires the support of three members of the Association and agreement from the candidate (e.g., by email). The ISCA statutes specify a maximum of three Board members from any one country. Each ISCA member will be asked to cast a anonymous ballot in the election, via a survey website.

Members elected to the Board will be expected to have one of the areas of responsibility listed below, to commit time to furthering the work of ISCA in their area, to attend the two-day Board meetings that take place at each annual INTERSPEECH conference and to participate in additional virtual meetings during the year (teleconferences). All candidates should be aware of these obligations and commit themselves to fulfilling them before agreeing to be nominated.

The Board will accept nominations either from proposers or self-nominations, as long as indication of support is provided. Please send your nomination(s) to the ISCA Secretariat secretariat@isca-speech.org BEFORE March 1st, 2019 (Friday) with the following information:

Full Name and Title:
Position and Institution:
Research area: 
Indication of willingness to serve if elected:
E-mail:
URL:
Short biography (one paragraph)
Short statement (one paragraph, describing the work they would intend to do on the Board)
Names and emails of three proposers (ISCA members).

Please provide a photo, for posting on the ballot.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you require further information about the nomination process or about duties of ISCA Board members. 

Best regards,
Kate Knill (ISCA Secretary) secretariat@isca-speech.org

Areas: 

FINANCE, CONFERENCES, WORKSHOPS, MEMBERSHIP SERVICES AND ISCA WEBSITE, PUBLICATIONS AND ARCHIVE, DISTINGUISHED LECTURERS AND GEOGRAPHICAL OUTREACH, SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS, TRAINING & EDUCATION, TECHNICAL, GRANTS & AWARDS, FELLOWS, INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, SECRETARIAT

Current Board:

John HANSEN (ISCA President)
Torbjørn SVENDSEN (ISCA Vice-President)
Mark HASEGAWA-JOHNSON (ISCA Treasurer)
Kate KNILL (ISCA Secretary)
Gerard BAILLY
Kay BERKLING
Phil GREEN
Tatsuya KAWAHARA
Lori LAMEL
Sebastian MÖLLER
Hema MURTHY
Satoshi NAKAMURA
Bhuvana RAMABHADRAN
Odette SCHARENBORG

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ISCA Fellows Nominations for 2019

The ISCA Fellows Program recognizes and honors outstanding members who have made significant contributions to the science and technology of speech communication. To qualify for this distinction, a candidate must have been an ISCA member for five years or more with a minimum of ten years experience in the field. Nominations may be made by any ISCA member.  A nomination should be supported by 4 references from ISCA Fellows or ISCA Board members. Current ISCA Board members are not eligible for nomination. The Fellows nomination form can be downloaded from http://bit.ly/2lwjfFr and the reference form from http://bit.ly/2iMJUNo. Nominations should be sent to fellows_nomination@isca-speech.org by February 10 2018. Those who plan to make a nomination are strongly advised to send a brief email to fellows_nomination@isca-speech.org. giving their candidate's name and affiliation.

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Dear Fellow Members of SProSIG,

The SProSIG officer election is now completed.  164 members of SProSIG participated in the election, from 27 member countries.   The top five candidates each received very strong support, received very similar vote totals (three were within one vote of each other), and have the strong support of the outgoing SProSIG officers and Permanent Advisory Committee.  The new SProSIG officers are:

Plinio Barbosa
Aoju Chen
Hongwei Ding
Martine Grice
Nigel Ward

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We are pleased to announce the Distinguished Lecturers for 2018-2019:

(1)   Dr. Daniel Hirst, Directeur de Recherche Emeritus, CNRS & Aix-Marseille University, France

(2)  Prof. Takayuki  Arai, Professor, Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology, Sophia University, Japan

Congratulations.

Satoshi Nakamura

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Video archives are available in 

http://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/archive/video-archive 

where keynote speeches from IS 2010 can be seen. You will also find video archives 

of many other conferences.

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 The photographs are representative and to go to the respective albums, please click on the photographs.

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ISCA SAC has 4 members and 8 volunteers. We are happy to welcome two new volunteers:

Haala Deeba Abbas,  a Ph.D. student from the Speech Processing Lab, IIIT-Hyderabad, India and

Midia Yousefi, a Ph.D. student from University of Texas at Dallas. 

Welcome! 

Barak

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APPEL A CANDIDATURES

Prix de thèse AFCP 2018

Depuis 2004, l'Association Francophone de la Communication Parlée (afcp) décerne un prix
scientifique récompensant la grande qualité d'un travail de thèse du domaine (ou
anglophone issue d?un laboratoire francophone), afin de promouvoir les recherches en
communication parlée, fondamentales ou appliquées, dans le domaine des technologies de la
communication, des sciences humaines et de la vie. Ce prix permet de soutenir et diffuser
les travaux de jeunes chercheurs du domaine.

Le prix est décerné par un jury composé des chercheurs élus du conseil d'administration
de l?AFCP. Il sera officiellement remis lors des prochaines Journées d?Etudes sur la
Parole.

Le ou la lauréat(e) se verra remettre la somme de 500 euros et sera invité(e) à présenter
ses travaux à la communauté de la communication parlée lors des prochaines JEP
(inscription offerte à la conférence). Il/elle se verra également offrir l?opportunité de
publier sa thèse sous la forme d?un livre dans la collection « Parole » (éditions CIPA).


CALENDRIER
Date limite de dépôt du dossier : 31 janvier 2019
Décision du jury AFCP : avril-mai 2019
Remise officielle du prix : JEP 2020

CONDITIONS DE CANDIDATURE A CET APPEL
Peut candidater au présent appel : tout docteur dont la thèse, préparée dans un
laboratoire francophone, et rédigée en français ou en anglais, a été soutenue entre le
1er janvier et le 31 décembre 2018. Toute candidature est limitée à une seule édition du
prix. Seuls les dossiers complets de candidature seront examinés.

CANDIDATURE
Pour candidater, il suffit de :
(1)    Envoyer un e-mail déclarant votre intention de candidater, avec vos nom, prénom,
titre de la thèse, directeur de thèse, et date de la soutenance à:
camille.guinaudeau@limsi.fr. Vous recevrez un accusé de réception.
(2)    Déposer votre manuscrit de thèse en PDF sur le serveur du site web de l?AFCP :
http://www.afcp-parole.org/spip.php?page=depot_these
(3)    Envoyer votre dossier complet via un courrier électronique à l?adresse
camille.guinaudeau@limsi.fr. La pièce jointe sera constituée d?un fichier unique (nommé
VOTRENOM.pdf), contenant dans l?ordre : (i) le résumé de la thèse (2 pages) ; (ii) la
liste des publications ; (iii) les rapports scannés du jury et des rapporteurs de
soutenance de thèse ; (iv) une lettre de recommandation scannée du directeur de thèse ;
(v) un CV (avec coordonnées complètes dont e-mail).

_____________Date de dépôt du dossier : 31 janvier 2019____________

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INTERSPEECH 2018

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