The Paris Graduate School of Linguistics (PGSL) is a newly-formed Paris-area graduate program covering all areas of language science.

It offers a comprehensive Master curriculum integrating advanced study and research, in close connection with PhD programs as well as with the Empirical Foundations of Linguistics consortium. 

Research plays a central part in the program, and students also take elective courses to develop an interdisciplinary outlook. Prior knowledge of French is not required.

For more details, please see https://paris-gsl.org/index.html

New funding opportunity: https://u-paris.fr/en/call-for-applications-international-students-miem-scholarship-program/

 Application deadline : February 1st 2021 (program starting September 1st 2021)

PGSL is funded by Smarts-UP (Student-centered iMproved, Active Research-based Training Strategy at Université de Paris) through the ANR SFRI grant « Grandes universités de recherche » (PIA3) 2020-2029.

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Cambridge's Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence MPhil

Are you interested in speech and language processing, computer vision & robotics, human-computer interaction, or machine learning? Please consider applying to the University of Cambridge?s Machine Learning and Machine Intelligence (MLMI) MPhil programme. 

The MLMI MPhil is an elite 11 month programme with a small cohort of about 30 students each year. Due to its small size there is the opportunity to carry out PhD-like research projects on the course (see here for previous students? dissertations), as well having a number of bespoke taught modules with lots of opportunities to interact with the faculty and other members of the course (see here for a list of modules and here for a list of the teaching staff).

Previous members of the MPhil have gone on to study for PhDs in top research groups (e.g. at Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford, and MIT), and have gone into top industry positions (e.g. Microsoft Research, Facebook AI Research, Open AI, and AstraZeneca).

This year our programme is restructuring around four overlapping tracks: speech and language processing, computer vision & robotics, human-computer interaction, and machine learning. You apply to one of these tracks and this choice shapes your module options and the research project that you will take on. We are especially interested in candidates who are interested in speech and language processing, computer vision & robotics, and human-computer interaction as we have significant capacity to expand in these areas this year.

Details about the application process can be found on our website. The application deadline is 2nd December 2021.

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Le projet European Language Equality vise à établir un agenda stratégique concernant la
recherche et l’innovation pour atteindre l’égalité des langues à l’ère numérique en
Europe en 2030. Dans le cadre de ce projet, les partenaires ont produit des rapports
documentant l'état des technologies et ressources pour chaque langue officielle, ainsi
que pour certaines langues non-officielles (D1.4-D1.36). Des états de l'art couvrant
quatre grands domaines ont également été produits (D2.12-D2.16):
- la traduction automatique:
- les technologies vocales
- les technologies pour l'analyse et la compréhension des langues
- les ressources et les bases de connaissance.

Tous ces rapports sont accessibles depuis le site du projet:
https://european-language-equality.eu/deliverables/

Le rapport consacré à l'état des technologies pour la langue française et pour la langue
des signes française a fait l'objet d'une traduction en français. Il est disponible ici:
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03637784

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The Steering Board of the ACM International Conference on Multimodal
Interaction (ICMI) invites proposals to host 27th Annual Conference,
to be held between the end of September and mid-November 2025.
Priority will be given for proposals hosted in Asia and Australia
continents.

Strong proposals from other regions are also welcome. ICMI 2020 was
held as a virtual conference (originally planned to be in Utrecht, the
Netherlands), ICMI 2021 was in Montreal, Canada, and ICMI 2022 was
recently held in Bengaluru, India. ICMI 2023 is planned to be held in
France, and ICMI 2024 in Costa Rica. The bidding process is done in
two stages. During the first stage, the initial proposals will be
reviewed by the steering committee to identify promising bids and
request additional information if necessary. During the second stage,
the revised proposals will be reviewed and the final selection is
done.

Evaluation
Proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria (unordered):

·       Experience and reputation of General Chairs and Program Chairs
·       Local multimodal interaction community support
·       (Local) government and industry support
·       Support and opportunities for students
·       Accessibility and attractiveness of proposed site
·       Suitability of proposed dates (with list of specific conflicts to avoid)
·       Adequacy of conference facilities for the anticipated number
of attendees
·       Adequacy of accommodations and food services in a range of
price categories and close to the conference facilities
·       Overall balance of budget projections
·       Geographical balance with regard to previous ICMI meetings

All communications, including request for information and bid
submission, should be sent to the ICMI Steering Board Chair (Albert
Ali Salah, a.a.salah@uu.nl).

Important Dates
For ICMI 2025 bids:
·       March 10, 2023  - Notify intention to submit proposal via email
·       April 10, 2023  - Draft proposals due
·       May 3, 2023 - Feedback to bidders
·       June 2, 2023 - Final bids due
·       June 20, 2023 - Bid selected

Bid Content
After the notification of intent, the steering board chair will share
with you more details, including successful bids from previous years.
The following questions have to be answered for the official bid (both
draft and final proposals). Text in square brackets [] contains
considerations to be taken into account.

1.     Describe briefly the conference, including side events
2.     Describe briefly the conference site.
3.     What date do you consider?
4.     What is the nearest (international) airport?
5.     Please give price quotes for the cheapest roundtrip to the
conference location from Frankfurt, London, New York, San Francisco,
Beijing and Tokyo (assume one week of travel with a Saturday overnight
stay)
6.     What transportation should participants use from the airport to
the conference site?
7.     Are there any visa-related issues we should know about (in
particular, are there any countries for which the visa requirements
are different, and conference attendance will be more difficult for
some reason? )
8.     Does the conference site both have a large room for a maximum
of 300 people and about 5 smaller rooms for a maximum of 30-70 people?
Is there wireless connection available for attendees? What about
audio-visual facilities?
9.     What is the approximate room rate (single and double
occupancy)? Is breakfast included? [Often all the attendees of ICMI
stay at the same hotel. If this is your case, the conference chair
should find a hotel that allows accommodation for the expected number
of people. Booking rooms and meals in the same hotel as the conference
rooms often helps reducing the overall costs.]
10.  Catering, including breaks, receptions, banquet and
entertainment. We encourage organizers to provide coffee breaks and
lunches in order to promote community building and discussion.
11.  Which support can your department give for the organization of
the conference (e.g., free secretarial assistance, facilities for
on-line payment?
12.  Which support can your department give during the conference
(e.g., free secretarial assistance, PCs / Macs at the conference
site)?
13.  What are your plans for sponsorship? To which associations /
companies / institutions do you plan to apply for financial
assistance? What do you realistically expect to receive from them?
What are your plans concerning student travel stipend program [A
minimum of $5,000 should be reserved from each year's conference
budget to support student travel from each of the three major
geographic regions (Americas, Europe-Africa, Asia-Pacific), or $15,000
total. For example, if a grant for $15,000 is obtained from NSF to
support U.S. student travel but there is no external funding for
students from other continents, then an additional $10,000 of you
budget should be set aside for students from the other two continents]
14.  What actions will you take to make the conference cheaper for
students? (e.g., seek financial support from other organizations,
provide cheaper rooms)? What reduction do you realistically expect?
15.  Provide the names of people who are foreseen or confirmed for the
major Conference Committees: General Chairs, Program Chairs,
Sponsorship Chair; volunteer labor, registration handling. One of the
General Chairs and one of the Program Chairs should be identified as
the lead, who will be the main point of contact for the ICMI steering
committee. Describe any experience the team has had in organizing
previous conferences and the number of participants at those
conferences.
16.  Local Multimodal Interaction community
17.  How do you propose to run the paper reviewing process? Do you see
any possible improvements?
18.  How will you organize the content of the conference to ensure a
high-quality and energetic exchange of information that includes
timely topics and stimulating external speakers? Please be specific in
your suggestions for how you would organize the main program and
workshops/tutorials
19.  Any other aspects that you may find relevant for the evaluation
of your proposal

Preparing a budget proposal
Based on estimates from previous attendance, one might expect 250
participants to ICMI. Please, provide three budgets, one for 150
participants, a second for 200 participants and the last one for 250,
considering reasonable physical/virtual attendance division. Costs
that will have to be covered include:
·       Rental of conference space and meeting rooms
·       AV equipment
·       Coffee breaks and possibly lunch
·       Registration desk/technical helpers (e.g., student volunteers)
·       Tutorials
·       Producing and printing the proceedings (in 2022, this was
around 9K-10K euros for main + adjunct proceedings)
·       10% ACM fee
·       15% contingency fund
·       Conference poster and advertising
·       Social banquet
·       Welcome reception
·       Lunch for ICMI steering board meeting

See https://www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/volunteer-resources/conference-planning/section-1-establishing-an-acm-event
for more information about preparing a budget for ACM conferences.

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We are please to advertise that our colleague from LPL, Thierry Legou, was awarded of a CNRS Cristal Medal :

https://www.cnrs.fr/en/talents/cnrs?medal=42
https://www.cnrs.fr/fr/personne/thierry-legou

The crystal medal is handed out to engineers, technicians, and administrative staff whose creativity, expertise, and sense of innovation have contributed, alongside researchers, to the advancement of knowledge and the excellence of French research.

Best regards,

Nathalie Henrich Bernardoni

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Dear colleagues

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Some conference and workshop news:

• There will be many prosody sessions at the International Congress of the Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) https://www.icphs2023.org/programme/programme-/ in Prague, August 7 – 11.

• There will be two prosody-related workshops at DGfS https://www.dgfs2024.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ in Bochum, Feb 28- Mar 1:

• Attitudinal meaning in prosody: https://idsl1.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/personen/lehrende-a-z/dr-heiko-seeliger/attitudinal-meaning-in-prosody

• Prosody in Focus – Prominence Marking from Multiple Perspectives https://vicom.info/workshop-prosody-in-focus-prominence-marking-from-multiple-perspectives/

Nigel Ward,  ISCA Speech Prosody Special Interest Group Chair

Professor of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso

nigel@utep.edu    https://www.cs.utep.edu/nigel/   

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Press Release – immediate
Paris, France and Tel Aviv, Israel, October 12, 2023

Distribution Agreement between ELDA and Lexicala for Multilingual Lexical Data Dissemination

ELDA and Lexicala by K Dictionaries are delighted to announce their new cooperation on distributing Language Resources for 50 languages.

ELDA is now making available Lexicala’s high-quality lexical data designed to enhance language learning, and support Machine Translation and diverse Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence applications.

The Lexicala resources consist of different groups of datasets. Full descriptions can be found in the ELRA Catalogue of Language Resources under the following links:

1. GLOBAL Multilingual Lexical Data: a network of lexicographic cores for major world languages, comprising monolingual cores, bilingual pairs, and multilingual combinations for 25 languages.
2. MULTIGLOSS Multilingual Glossaries: a series of innovative word-to-sense glossaries for over 30 languages into 45 more languages.
3. Morphological lexicons: extensive morphological lists linking inflected forms to main lemmas for 15 languages.
4. Parallel Corpora & Domains: parallel corpora for nearly 400 language pairs and numerous multilingual combinations, featuring general language and vertical domain vocabularies.
5. Biographical & Geographical Names:

• English BIO Biographical Names: 4,200 dictionary entries regarding prominent persons worldwide.
• English GEO Geographical Names: 7,200 dictionary entries regarding major locations worldwide.
• GEOLINGUAL Tables: multilingual tables of over 200 countries and geographical names – including their adjectives, persons, and main languages – in 16 languages.
• Audio Pronunciation & Phonetic Transcription: human voice recordings of single-word lemmas and multiword expressions, as well as IPA and alternative scripts for 21 languages.

 For more information, please write to contact@elda.org.

 About Lexicala

Lexicala by K Dictionaries offers multi-layer lexical data for and across 50 languages, relying on 30-year experience in pedagogical and multilingual lexicography worldwide. Lexicala converges manual content creation and curation with automated data processes and helps to enhance machine translation and other natural language processing applications, as well as language learning and model training.

To find out more about Lexicala, please visit: https://lexicala.com/

About ELDA

The Evaluation and Language resources Distribution Agency (ELDA) identifies, collects, markets, and distributes language resources, along with the dissemination of general information in the field of Human Language Technologies (HLT). ELDA has considerable knowledge and skills in HLT applications. ELDA is part of major French, European and international projects in the field of HLT.

To find out more about ELDA, please visit: http://www.elda.org/

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Following the success of the bi-annual ASRU workshop over the past decade, the IEEE Speech and Language Technical Committee (SLTC) invites proposals to host the 2025 IEEE Workshop on Automatic Speech Recognition and Understanding (ASRU 2025). Past ASRU workshops have fostered a collegiate atmosphere through a thoughtful selection of venues, thus offering a unique opportunity for researchers to interact and learn. 

The proposal should include the information outlined below. 

• Workshop location and practicalities
  • Geographical location
  • Workshop venue (facilities, meeting rooms, network access during the workshop, audio/visual equipment)
  • Accommodation -- hotel availability and pricing
  • Meals
  • Transportation options -- major airports, logistics, visas 
    Climate
  • Information on the policy regarding online presentation and participation
• Approximate workshop dates
  • Previous workshops have been held in the month of December
• Approximate total cost for participants to attend, including accommodation, meals, and registration fees.
• Estimated budget for 300-400+ participants and expected sponsorships, including venue costs, administration, banquet, coffee breaks, publication costs, etc.
• Committee Personnel
  • General chair(s)
  • Technical chair(s)
  • Local arrangements chair(s)
  • Other committee members and roles
• Tentative program
  • Dates for paper submission, notification of acceptance, proposals for
    demonstrations, early registration
  • Reception, talks, posters, demo session, banquet, etc.
  • Substantial program additions/changes vs. past instances of ASRU

The deadline for proposals is June 14, 2024.

Please send proposals and questions to the Workshop Sub-Committee:

Zhijian Ou 

Abdelrahman Mohamed 

Seokhwan Kim 

Hagai Aronowitz 

Sibel Oyman 

Haitao Mi 

In July 2024, the IEEE SLTC will review proposals, and selection results are expected by August 15, 2024. 

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, we encourage you to contact the IEEE SLTC Workshops Sub-Committee in advance of submitting a proposal. They can provide an example of a past successful proposal and example budget. Further, proposers who make contact before April 1, 2024 may be invited to briefly present in-person or virtually at the annual IEEE SLTC meeting at ICASSP 2024 (https://2024.ieeeicassp.org/) to obtain feedback from the SLTC. Presentations should be reasonably specific but need not be complete. Note that the SLTC does not have funding available for travel to ICASSP. 

The organizers of the ASRU workshop do not have to be SLTC members, and we encourage submissions from all potential organizers. IEEE SLTC members are welcome to participate in proposals, and the organizing committees of past ASRU events have included many SLTC members. To maintain fairness of selection, SLTC members who are affiliated with any ASRU 2025 proposals will not participate in the proposal selection vote. Further, the members of the Workshops Sub-Committee may not be affiliated with any ASRU 2025 proposals. Please feel free to distribute this call for proposals far and wide, and invite members of the speech and language community at large to submit a proposal to organize the next ASRU workshop.

For more information on the most recent workshops, please see:

http://www.asru2023.org/ for information about ASRU 2023 in Taipei, Taiwan

And feel free to contact the Workshops Sub-committee with questions.

Zhijian Ou, Abdelrahman Mohamed, Seokhwan Kim, Hagai Aronowitz, Sibel Oyman, Haitao Mi

IEEE SLTC Workshops Sub-committee

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We invite applications for the Adam Kilgarriff Prize. 

Full information for potential applicants can be found here : https://kilgarriff.co.uk/prize/category/news/. 

The deadline for applications is 30th September 2024. A winner will be announced on or before 31st December 2024, and the Prize will be awarded at the eLex Conference of 2025. 

This is the fifth iteration of the Adam Kilgarriff Prize, which has so far had four excellent winners.

We look forward to receiving your applications! 

Michael Rundell, Chair of Trustees, Adam Kilgarriff Prize

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• https://twitter.com/ManyLanguagesC 
• https://bsky.app/profile/manylanguagesc.bsky.social

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Dear colleagues, 

The Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (LPP) at Sorbonne Nouvelle University and the ENT Department at Hôpital Foch are delighted to announce a symposium in honor of Lise Crevier-Buchman, entitled 'Le larynx dans tous ses états : de la clinique à la phonétique' (https://bit.ly/lpplarynx).

This full-day event is scheduled to occur on May 24, 2024, in the vicinity of Paris at the Foch Hospital (40, rue Worth, 72073 Suresnes, Suresnes-Mont Valérien station). The symposium will be conducted in person; however, a link will be provided for those interested in participating online.

These occasions will be devoted to commemorating Lise Crevier-Buchman's trajectory, impact and numerous achievements within the Parole community and clinical environments in which she works. The agenda will encompass multiple presentations delivered by national and international researchers and clinicians focusing on her primary areas of research themes, alongisde social events. Further information regarding thepresentations will be disclosed at a later date.

Registration for this event is free but mandatory prior to March 31, 2024 via this form. (alternative link: https://framaforms.org/inscription-au-colloque-en-lhonneur-de-lise-crevier-buchman-1707742980 )

We look forward to welcoming you to this day of exchange and celebration. 

Sincerely yours, on behalf of the organizing committee (Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie and Hôpital Foch),

Didier Demolin, Angélique Amelot, Claire Pillot-Loiseau, Aude Julien-Lafferrière, Stéphane Hans, Nicolas Audibert, Alexis Dehais Underdown, Amelia Pettirossi, Amélie Elmerich, Andrés Lara, Angelina bourbon, Clara Ponchard

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The International Conference on Multimodal Interaction (ICMI) is the
premier international forum for multidisciplinary research on
multimodal human-human and human-computer interaction, interfaces, and
system development. We are requesting nominations for two awards which
will be presented during ICMI 2024 (4-8 Nov 2024, Costa Rica).

- Sustained Accomplishment Award: This award will be given to a senior
scientist who has made innovative, long-lasting, and influential
contributions to the field of multimodal interaction, interfaces, and
systems. The nominee will have demonstrated vision in shaping the
field, had a sustained record of high-impact research, pioneered one
or more research directions, and substantially influenced the work of
others.
- Community Service Award: This award will be given to a scientist who
has made invaluable social-organizational contributions that have
collectively had a major impact on improving the ICMI community and
its annual events. Emphasis will be placed on selecting an individual
who has made major contributions over a sustained period of five years
or longer, including ones that have diversified and built the
community, expanded opportunities for student training and
participation, and similarly influential contributions.

Nomination Process: The deadline for Nominations in both categories is
*March 30, 2024*. The main requirement is a nomination statement, with a
maximum length of one page (pdf), describing the main achievements and
impact of the nominee. A pointer to the personal webpage and CV of the
nominees can also be submitted additionally, as well as a list of
further endorsers of the nomination. Nominations may be received from
any
member of the multimodal interaction research community. Nominations
should be emailed to the ICMI Steering Board Chair (Albert Ali Salah,
a.a.salah@uu.nl). Please expect a confirmation of receipt.

Selection Process: The 2024 Awards Committee will review nominations
for each award category, determine whether it is appropriate to give
an award for each of the categories, and make a final decision. The
Committee might also determine to give more than one award in a given
category. Conflict of interest procedures prohibit that any members of
the Awards Committee be considered for an award while serving on the
committee, or that they participate in evaluating any candidate with
whom they have had significant professional collaborations or from
whom they have received financial remuneration.
The Sustained Accomplishment Awardee is invited to ICMI'24 to give a
keynote talk.

Please also see 'Policies and Procedures for Honors Conferred by ACM'
(https://awards.acm.org/policies-and-procedures)

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

Best,
Albert

Past Awardees:
Sustained Accomplishment Award: Louis-Philippe Morency (2023), Daniel
Gatica-Perez (2022), Elizabeth André (2021), Shrikanth Narayanan
(2020), Alex Waibel (2019), James Crowley (2018), Phil Cohen (2017),
Wolfgang Wahlster (2016), Eric Horvitz (2015), Sharon Oviatt (2014)

Community Service Award: Carlos Busso (2023), Yukiko Nakano (2022),
Louis-Philippe Morency (2021), Fabio Pianesi (2020), Dan Bohus (2019),
Daniel Gatica-Perez (2017), Kenji Mase (2015), Matthew Turk (2014)

--
Albert Ali Salah
Prof. Social and Affective Computing,
Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University,
www.cs.uu.nl
Personal: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~salah006/

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