Dear ISCA members and friends,

The new ISCA board has taken up its duties. As usual, changes come with obstacles, but also with a good power for innovation.

On the low side, you might have noted that we have again been object of scamming attacks. This time, the attacker apparently has had a very wide reach, and asked for money transfer to support ISCA logistics. While we are still in the process of identifying the source, and to make the ISCA website and IT infrastructure more secure, there will be no 100% security against such attacks. We thus have to rely on the intuition of our members. In particular, beware of begging messages which appear to come from your boss, or someone in authority, in our case the ISCA president. In no way, ISCA would approach you to transfer money in whatever way (except in the process of your membership renewal).

On the positive side, there have been some activities related to our Special Interest Groups (SIGs). There is an initiative to start a new regional SIG related to Africa, and Mahadeva Prasanna has scheduled a preparation workshop for December. We received comments on the low visibility of SIGs and their activities; as a first measure, we proposed that all SIGs should start to prepare introductory notes ? just like this one ? for the upcoming ISCApads. Thus, next month, you will hopefully see the first of this series of notes at this place. We would like to encourage such introductory notes also for other activities related to ISCA: If you are member of one of the related groups, please feel free to write up some useful information to attract new members and activities, and send them to Chris Wellekens.

In the next months, ISCA will have to work on three important topics:

• Better support conference and workshop organizers, but also the internal administration within ISCA, with better electronic tools; these should include the review portal, the conference registration, as well as the membership administration;
• Refresh our communication with current and future ISCA members, and the entire community; social media will play an important role in this plan, and also our well-established ISCApad might see a new shape;
• Provide a permanent support for the technical part of conference (Interspeech) organization; this is not meant to replace the Technical Program Committee Chairs, but to provide them a steady support throughout the years

We would be happy to receive your opinion and suggestions on all of these topics.

Finally, Meg Zellers and Jianhua Tao would like to remind you that we still seek bids for Interspeech 2025. Details on the bidding process can be found on the ISCA web site, and the bidding deadline is December 15.

Have a good read of ISCA pad, as usual excellently compiled by Chris Wellekens.

Odette Scharenborg (ISCA vice president)

Sebastian Möller (ISCA president)

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We would like to emphasize this as we actively seek bids for Interspeech 2025. Details on the bidding process can be found on the ISCA web site. The most important part of a bid is an enthusiastic and diverse team from our research community, willing to invest effort into the organization of such a conference over a period of 3-4 years. Having experience with organizing smaller-scale events (such as ITRWs or other ISCA-endorsed workshops) is a plus, as well as some visibility within our community. However, as part of the process, the ISCA board ? and in particular the conference coordinators ? are eager to offer support and feedback for the preparation of a successful bid. In fact, many bids which were not successful on their first submission are continuously improved in order to produce the best possible conference in the end.

Thus, if you are in doubt whether you can organize Interspeech, please give it careful thought, and talk to the ISCA conference coordinators to get their advice. They can be reached by email at conferences@isca-speech.org and will be very happy to organize a meeting with you and your team. The deadline for bid submissions for 2025 is December 15 of this year.

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ISCA-PECRAC (Postdoc & Early Career Researcher Advisory Committee) is pleased to invite postdoc & early career researchers to participate in the 1st Early Career Researcher Annual Gathering @ Interspeech 2021 (online this year).

The Early Career Researcher Annual Gathering aims to provide an opportunity for postdoc & early career researchers to meet and communicate at INTERSPEECH. In the framework of ISCA-PECRAC, we would like:

• to establish link and collaboration between postdocs in different institutions and early career researchers from all over the world,

• to keep postdoc & early career researchers posted with current postdoc & tenure-track job offers,

• to provide mentoring,

• to give feedback to their major issues (in research),

• to create an environment where postdoc & early career researchers can socialize with their peers.

1st Early Career Researcher Annual Gathering @ Interspeech 2021

Time : August 30 at 18:00 - Brno time (preliminary slot)

Location : Online

Program :

• Introduction talk for for ISCA-PECRAC (15 mins)

• Keynote / invited speaker (30 mins)

• Q & A (30mins)

• Recruitment and discussion


Contacts:

Yaru Wu (yaru.wu@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr)

Berrak Sisman (berrak_sisman@sutd.edu.sg)

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Nominations for ISCA distinguished lecturers.

We are now open for nominations for ISCA Distinguished Lecturers for the period 2022-2023. Details of the scheme are available at the ISCA Distinguished Lecturers webpage.

Each nomination should include the following information:

• a short biography of the candidate

• a list of selected publications

• a CV (resume)

• reasons for nomination

• a website of the nominee, if possible

• topics/titles of up to three possible lectures that the nominee could give 

A template form for nomination is available from ISCA Web

## Please link to the nomination

Please note that the nominator must ensure the candidate is willing to serve if elected. Also, nominations from previous years will be only considered if updated. Finally, self-nominations are permitted, but must include a letter of support from an ISCA Fellow or Board Member.

Nominations (for 2022-23) should be sent to secretariat [at] isca-speech.org before 31 January 2022

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ISCA Distinguished Lecturer for 2021-2022
         
We are pleased to announce the Distinguished Lecturer for 2021-2022:

Prof. Dr. Reinhold Haeb-Umbach, Communications Engineering, Paderborn University, Germany

Congratulations.

Nobuaki Minematsu

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We encourage all members tokeep contact with ISCA via our social nets. Also you will bde kept informed about all events on our website. 

This is particularly important in this time where due to the coronavirus, many modifications may be brought to the conference.

ISCA Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/iscaspeech/

ISCA Twitter : https://twitter.com/ISCAFOX

ISCA SAC Student Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/groups/98794207409/

 website : www.isca-speech.org

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 ISCA is committed to supporting diversity in speech communication, and celebrating speech
communication as an exciting and diverse field of research and discovery. Moreover, ISCA
is committed to gender equality.

We are therefore delighted to announce that the database with names, affiliations,
positions, and research topics of women in speech science and speech technology,
originally started by Maxine Eskenazi, is now a wonderful, searchable website, created by
Mark Hasegawa-Johnson.

The website can be found at http://isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/diversity?id=264

The website can be used for, amongst others:
- Workshop and conference organisers to search for keynote and invited speakers,
panelists, and co-organisers
- Nominations for distinguished lecturers
- Norminations for awards, medals, fellowships, and prizes
- Prospective new faculty by faculty search committees

If you identify yourself as female and want to be added to this list, please follow the
instructions on the WomenNspeech website.

We hope this website will be useful to many!

Julia Hirschberg
Mark Hasegawa-Johnson
Odette Scharenborg

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Code-of-Conduct for Conference and Workshop Attendees

ISCA is committed to providing a pleasant conference experience
without harassment and discrimination for anyone, regardless of
gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability and physical
appearance.  We do not tolerate any verbal or non-verbal expressions
of harassment or discrimination.  Please note that it matters if a
person feels harassed or discriminated regardless of the original
intent of the expressions. In particular, sexual language and imagery
are not appropriate in any conference venue.  Conference participants
who engage in inappropriate behavior may be expelled from the
conference without a refund at the discretion of the conference
organizer. These persons may be included in a watchlist for future
ISCA-sponsored events.

If you are troubled by the behavior of another attendee at the
conference, or notice someone is in trouble, please speak immediately
to a member of conference staff or send a message to <ethics@isca-speech.org>.

Your concern will be heard in confidence and taken seriously to solve
the problem.

* Short version: (to be posted in a limited space)

ISCA is committed to a pleasant conference experience without
harassment and discrimination. Our code-of-conduct can be found at:
    http://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/about-isca?id=278

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Code of Ethics for Authors

ISCA is committed to publishing high-quality journals and conference
proceedings.  To this end, all authors are requested to ensure they
adhere to ethical standards. Authors should meet the following
standards:

(1) The work does not include fabrication, falsification, or any kind
of data breach.  Authors should retain their code and maintain a log
of the data that produced the results in their paper.  Authors are
also encouraged to make their code and dataset freely available.

(2) The work does not include plagiarism or significant
self-plagiarism.  The work must be original, and any paper which
significantly overlaps with previous work is not allowed.  Proper
reference to previous work is also required.  Verbatim copying of work
that has been distributed but not refereed, such as technical reports
and arXiv articles, is permitted only if the authors are the
same.  ISCA (and conference organizers or journal editors) may use
tools to detect (self-)plagiarism and reject papers without review.
The work may not be submitted to any other conference, workshop or
journal during the review process.

(3) The work does not use figures, photographs, or any other kind of
content whose copyright is not owned by or granted to the authors,
except for proper quotations allowed by the copyright law.  ISCA (and
conference organizers or journal editors) may request authors to
provide evidence of permission to use the content for their work.

(4) The work does not include inappropriate content in terms of human
rights.  ISCA (and conference organizers or journal editors) may
request authors to provide evidence of approval from the host Ethics
Committee (Institutional Review Board or equivalent) that the work
meets their Institution's ethical requirements, and/or explicit
consent from the human subjects involved in the work.

(5) All (co-)authors must be responsible and accountable for the work,
and consent to its submission.

Ethical Standard checking is not limited to these 5 points.

If any concerns relating to this code are raised or reported, ISCA
(and conference organizers or journal editors) will convene their
Ethics Committee to investigate the matter and decide on appropriate
action, which may include rejection/removal of the paper (and other
papers in the same conference/workshop by the same authors) and
suspension of future submissions by the authors.

ISCA also enforces the No-show policy for conference papers.  Any
paper accepted into the technical program but not presented on-site
may be withdrawn from the official proceedings.  Please refer to
https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb/index.php/conferences point 2) and 8).

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REMINDER: ISCA INTERNATIONAL VIRTUAL SEMINARS

Now's the time of year to start organising your seminar programme for the coming academic year.

Don't forget that ISCA has recruited 17 leading researchers in Speech Communication prepared to give seminars on line.

For instance, Gustav Henter of KTH Stockholm comments:

As the person responsible for seminars at the Division of Speech, Music and Hearing (TMH) at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, I would like to thank you for the excellent initiative to set up ISCA international virtual seminars during the pandemic. Thus far our division has made use of this scheme on three occasions:  The idea to invite distinguished speakers virtually has been widely appreciated by the department. It is likely that we may schedule further virtual seminar from your pool for our autumn semester seminars as well.

For details, follow the entry Online Seminars in the left menu on the ISCA home page, https://www.isca-speech.org/iscaweb

-- 
************************
Professor Phil Green
SpandH
Computer Science
University of Sheffield
************************

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Friends,

The IEEE SPS ME-UYR (Mentoring Experiences for Underrepresented Young Researchers) steering committee is proposing a new mentoring program for young IEEE SPS researchers and would like to invite you to join as potential student mentors. The program has been started this year to address a critical diversity issue in IEEE as well as other spoken language processing and signal processing organizations: the low percentage of women and underrepresented minorities. The number of female researchers in spoken language processing and signal processing within the IEEE community is about 10%. The numbers for other underrepresented minorities in other technical areas within signal processing are similar or even worse.

To address this imbalance, this new program will connect young researchers from underrepresented groups with established researchers in signal processing to support a student research project coordinated with the mentor which is of significant interest to both. Each project will last for 9 months. The young researchers will also be supported with travel funds to attend one conference or workshop after the project. An event in conjunction with the annual ICASSP conference will also be supported for the students to bring students and mentors together to share their experiences.

In this message, the ME-UYR committee is first recruiting potential mentors interested in increasing diversity within IEEE SPS and identifying their areas of research interest. We will send out a call to potential student participants asking them to sign up for an online 'students meet mentors' event which we will also invite you to. This online event will be designed to match students with mentors in their field. Once you have accepted one of the students as your mentee the two of you will write a one-page proposal together describing a research plan of interest to you both and submit it to our evaluation committee for review (the deadline is December 1, 2021). This event will be held on October 28 at 11am Eastern Time. Please send an email to sp-me-uyr@listserv.ieee.org to register for the event.

Once mentors and students have been connected, the 9-month research mentoring projects will begin. We expect the first ME-UYR program to support about 12 projects in IEEE-SPS. A more detailed description of the program can be found here: https://signalprocessingsociety.org/community-involvement/me-uyr-mentoring-experiences-underrepresented-young-researchers-program .

As a highly respected researcher in IEEE SPS organizations, we would very much like you to participate with us in this program. The lasting benefits to young diversity students themselves as well as to IEEE itself and the signal processing societies are extremely significant, so we would really appreciate your acceptance! Please respond by October 20 if you can join.

Sincerely yours,

IEEE SPS ME-UYR Committee

Irene Amerini

Oliver Cossairt

Mark Hasegawa-Johnson

Julia Hirschberg

Ina Kodrasi

Arvind Rao

Tirza Routtenberg

Odette Scharenborg

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The papers are already publicly available, at https://www.isca-speech.org/archive/SpeechProsody_2020/ .  To also see the videos, you can register for the conference, for only 4000 Yen, at https://www.gavo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/sp2020_registration/vp/ .

I encourage you to contact the authors with questions, or just to let them know that you liked their work.  Since we won't be meeting physically this year, let's make the extra effort to stay connected as a community.

Many thanks to Professor Minematsu and the Organizing Committee for putting together an excellent set of papers and talks, in a time of adversity.

Nigel Ward, SProSIG Chair

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