Dear ISCA members:

Welcome to the next installment of the ISCApad for March 2019!  This edition has a number of updates from the community including upcoming meetings, job openings, theses, and announcements.

INTERSPEECH-2019: [http://www.interspeech2019.org/] will take place September 15-19, 2019, in Graz, AUSTRIA, with the theme being: Crossroads of Speech and Language. Just a reminder that March 29^rd is the deadline for paper submissions (the paper update deadline is April 5^th).

ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement:

As is customary at ISCA Interspeech, we make several awards to recognize leadership in our community. I am pleased to announce that ISCA has selected Prof.. Keiichi Tokuda as the recipient of the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement 2019 in recognition of “Pioneering the statistical parametric approach to speech synthesis, and for leadership in the provision of enabling software tools.” Prof. Tokuda is the originator of many of the early methods for statistical parametric speech synthesis using HMMs, which now include DNN and LSTM-based statistical parametric speech synthesis methods. Prof. Keiichi Tokuda will deliver a plenary speech in INTERSPEECH 2019. Congratulations to Prof. Keiichi Tokuda!

 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. The award of this ISCA Medal has been established since 1989. It.is presented to the recipient by the ISCA President at the INTERSPEECH opening ceremony, when the Medalist also delivers a keynote speech.

Again, this is the first time Interspeech will be held in Austria, and it promises to be a great opportunity to experience speech and language processing in a country where one of the first major published works on speech by Wolfgang von Kempelen originated! There are still opportunities for industry sponsorship, and I encourage companies to consider providing even modest support, since this allows the organizers to provide expanded opportunities for attendees, particularly for students and young researchers exploring job prospects!

Supporting Diversity in Speech Communication:

ISCA has launched a new area on the ISCA website to support diversity in speech communication. This is intended to offer opportunities for organizers of workshops and conferences to help expand diversity representation in terns of geographic, gender, and topic/specialization. Please visit the ISCA website to learn more! https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/

Applications are open for the Tenth Christian Benoît Award:

Applications are also being accepted for the Christian Benoît Award! This award is given out on a biennial basis to a promising young scientist in the domain of SPEECH COMMUNICATION to further their career in the field. If you know of a promising scientist/researcher, please visit the ISCA website to learn more! https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/

Election of members to the Board of ISCA (2019-2023):

March is also an important month for ISCA, since this is when ISCA holds the election of Board Members which occurs every two years, including this year.  We will elect 6 new members to the Board in 2019. I would like to announce that we have concluded the nomination of the ISCA Board election 2019 with 12 candidates received. The voting ballot will start in March 2019. All members will receive an email invitation to vote. I write to thank you for your participation in the nomination process, and call for your participation again by casting your vote!

ISCA INTERSPEECH-2022 (location announcement):

Finally, I would like to update all on the ISCA Board evaluation process which took place for potential sites for ISCA INTERSPEECH-2022. We received four highly competitive proposals which were reviewed extensively by the ISCA Conferences Sub-Committee and discussed in ISCA Board Virtual Meetings as well. The board completed two rounds of voting in order to select the final entry, and I am pleased to announce that ISCA INTERSPEECH-2022 will take place in Dublin, Ireland! I encourage all interested in organizing future Interspeech events to consider submitting proposals, especially for regions which have not hosted Interspeech in recent years!

As always, we welcome feedback and input from the ISCA community – if you have suggestions for our society or want to be involved, please let us know!

We look forward to your participation in ISCA and INTERSPEECH-2019!

John H.L. Hansen, ISCA President

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At the start of this new year 2019, we invite you to update your contact and
professional information on the ISCA Membership Portal:

   http://www.isca-speech.org/iscamember/member.php

 

If you are one of the people who have multiple START IDs with different emails, please let us know your preferred username and we will see about cleaning this up.

 We are also updating the reviewer base in anticipation of Interspeech 2019.
 Please think to nominate yourself or your colleagues to serve as reviewers.

The recommended required experience is for the nominee to have obtained their
 PhD and be first author of at least one journal article or several conference
 papers. If the nominee stopped their studies with a Masters, they should have
 at least 5-7 years of experience and be the first author of at least one or
 two journal articles and several conference papers.

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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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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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INTERSPEECH 2018

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