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ISCApad #295 |
| Monday, January 09, 2023 by Chris Wellekens |
2 ISCA News
| 2-1 | Message of Catarina Botelho, General Coordinator of ISCA-SAC Dear friends of ISCA, I am writing this message to tell you about the student advisory committee of ISCA (ISCA-SAC) and the initiatives we promote. As you may know, ISCA-SAC’s main goal is to increase the interaction among students and senior researchers. To this end, we organise a series of events during the annual Interspeech conference, including the Doctoral Consortium, Students Meet Experts, and two mentoring initiatives. Let me tell you more about these events. The Doctoral Consortium gives PhD students the opportunity to receive feedback on their ongoing dissertation project from a panel of experts, and to meet other PhD students working on related topics. On the other hand, Students Meet Experts consists of a Q&A panel discussion with experts from academia and industry, with the most diverse questions, ranging from career planning to mental health. Finally, the mentoring initiatives, co-organized with the Mentoring Committee, connect mentors and mentees in informal small round tables, or one-to-one mentoring sessions. At the last Interspeech, in 2022, we had over 64 mentors from 21 countries. Besides these events, we also host the Speech Pitch podcast. The idea started during the pandemic, when we were lacking social interaction and platforms to get to know other researchers in the community. Currently, we have released six episodes, where we chatted with Iona Gessinger, Odette Scharenborg, Nicholas Cummins, Shri Narayanan, John Hansen, and Pascale Fung. We talked about their work, their stories, their ideas, and lessons learnt during their careers. So far, we have had listeners from 44 different countries, but we hope these (and future) episodes can reach many more people! ISCA-SAC has been continuously growing, and we hope to be able to reach more students from the most diverse backgrounds this year, and in years to come. Thus, I would like to invite everyone to join us – join with your ideas and feedback, join our events at Interspeech, join as a mentor, join as a podcast listener, join the SAC or the Mentoring Committee as a volunteer to help plan the events for Interspeech 2023, or simply join us through our social media! Finally, as I will soon leave my role as General Coordinator of ISCA-SAC, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all ISCA-SAC and Mentoring Committee members, all the researchers that contributed to our events either as mentors, panellists, and podcast guests, and all participants that took part in the activities. It has been a true pleasure to contribute to this community, and learn from all of you. I wish you all the best for 2023! Catarina Botelho General Coordinator of ISCA-SAC
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| 2-2 | Message from ISCA president Prof. Sebastian Möller
Dear friends of ISCA,
with this ISCApad, I would like to wish you all a good start for the year 2023. A year which hopefully brings to an end some of the global crises we were facing in the past year, such as the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine. And a year full of new ideas and energy, with lots of in-person communication and events, such as at INTERSPEECH 2023 – safe the date for August 20-24 in Dublin, Ireland.
On the ISCA side, I would like to draw your attention to
as well as all the other activities highlighted in this ISCApad, as usual kindly compiled by Chris Wellekens. I wish you a good read.
Sebastian Möller ISCA President
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| 2-3 | ISCA Medals and Fellows Nominations 2023ISCA Medals and Fellows Nominations 2023Nominations are open for the following ISCA Awards: 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. Any ISCA member can make a nomination. All nominations for ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement should be submitted to the ISCA Secretary at secretariat@isca-speech.org by 6 January 2023 using the nomination form. The ISCA Board will select the winner by 1 February and announce the winner in the March 2023 ISCApad. Unsuccessful candidates from previous year(s) must be re-nominated to qualify for candidacy. The ISCA Service Medal recognizes an ISCA member who has provided extraordinary service to ISCA and/or the Speech Communication community. Any ISCA Board or Advisory Council member can make a nomination. All nominations for an ISCA Service Medal should be submitted to the ISCA Secretary at secretariat@isca-speech.org by 6 January 20223 using the nomination form. Unsuccessful candidates from previous year(s) must be re-nominated to qualify for candidacy. The ISCA Fellows Program recognises and honours 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 except for those on the Felows Selection Committee.. Fellows may be recognised by their outstanding scientific and/or technical contributions and/or continued significant service to ISCA. The supporting case for the candidate's nomination should include up to 3 major contributions which have had impact on the speech community and/or society in general. A nomination should be supported by 3 references from senior scientists/technologists in the Speech Communication community, for instance ISCA Fellows and ISCA Board members. Current ISCA Board members are not eligible for nomination. Members of the Fellows Selection Committee may not nominate candidates or provide references. All nominations for ISCA Fellow should be sent to fellows_nomination AT isca-speech.org by 10 February 2023using the nomination form. Those who plan to nominate are strongly advised to send brief information on candidates (candidate's name and affiliation) to the above email address before January 10 with your name and contact email address.
Sebastian Möller
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| 2-4 | Sadaoki Furui Workshop Sadaoki Furui Workshop Sadly, one of the great pioneers and creative geniuses of speech processing, Dr. Sadaoki Furui, passed away on 31st July 2022 at the age of 76. Because of the important role that Sadaoki Furui played not only for us as scientists, but also as a co-founder of our community, the first ISCA presidents who preceded and succeeded Sadaoki Furui and the current ISCA president organized a virtual workshop in his honor. The workshop had contributions from many individuals of our community, and there were many personal viewpoints and historic events cited by close colleagues and friends of Sadaoki Furui. The organizers would like to thank all attendees for their very personal and valuable contributions, and for their interest in the workshop. A (non-professional) video recording of the workshop can be found here: https://tubcloud.tu-berlin.de/s/m4A5tnHLAkAdxBE Isabel Trancoso, Roger K. Moore, Julia Hirschberg & Sebastian Möller ---
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| 2-5 | Professor Dr Hermann Künzel obituary
Prof. Dr. Hermann Jozef Künzel 10 April 1950 – 18 October 2022 Dear members of IAFPA, dear phoneticians, dear colleagues, It is with great sadness, that we have to inform you that Professor Hermann Künzel passed away last week on the 18th of October 2022. He was one of IAFPA`s founding members and the association‘s second President. Many of us in IAFPA remember him as a forensic colleague at the BKA, an academic colleague at the University, as a participant at IAFPA conferences, as a mentor, a lecturer or as a good friend. His enthusiasm for the field has inspired many of us. His time and energy contributed to forensic analysis seemed endless. Künzel`s many research projects played a key role in the improvement of analysis methods and a deeper understanding of the complexity of forensic investigations, and his work was essential in the development of the acoustic-phonetic method of forensic speaker recognition. His book called “Sprechererkennung”, published in 1987, offered the first detailed description of this method; it was used as a reference work in many developing forensic laboratories at the time and its content was studied and cited by academics and students worldwide. In 1977 he obtained his PhD from the University of Kiel. In May of 1980 Hermann Künzel became the very first linguist appointed by the Bundeskriminalamt in Wiesbaden. Under his guidance and over a period of 10 years the “Fachbereich Sprecher-Identifizierung; Tonband auswertung und linguistische Textanalyse” was established with several linguists and phoneticians carrying out between 200-350 cases per year. In addition, research projects were conducted in order to provide the theoretical background data necessary for the improvement of identification methods and for the interpretation of case findings. Few forensic laboratories at the time were able to conduct research; the international community profited greatly from the efforts of the Wiesbadener BKA scientists. Between 1994 and 1999 he was an Honorary Professor of Phonetics at University of Trier. Between 2000 and 2015 he was a professor and head of the Institute of Phonetics at the University of Marburg. Many forensic phoneticians who are currently working at the BKA or LKA, or who were employed there, were trained by him and developed their enthusiasm for forensic phonetics at that time. From 2000 onwards he was involved in the further development and testing of the BATVOX ID-system from the Agnitio Voice ID company and his work formed the basis for the integration of automatic speaker recognition into existing auditory-acoustic speaker identification methods. For many colleagues and students, Hermann Künzel was an inspirational pioneer, valuable advisor and mentor. In grateful remembrance, we take leave of our highly esteemed colleague and companion. Our deepest sympathy goes to his wife, Ute, and his family.
Gea de Jong-Lendle on behalf of the IAFPA
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| 2-6 | Call for DL nominations for 2023-2024 Call for DL nominations for 2023-2024
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.
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| 2-7 | Obituary for Anne Cutler (1945-2022) Obituary for Anne Cutler (1945-2022)
In early June, Professor Anne Cutler suddenly passed away shortly after having fallen ill on a trip to the Netherlands. As many of you know, Anne Cutler was a highly valued member of ISCA, and received ISCA's highest honour, the ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement 'for charting the variation of speech perception across languages, and for her leadership in the field of speech perception research', in 2014.
Since June, a number of written testimonials and events focused on Anne Cutler and the impact she had on our scientific community, but also on science in general. Some of the more prominent ones are:
I hope that these testimonials cover some of the multiple facets Anne has brought into our community; thanks to Isabel Trancoso, Cathy Best and many of our Australian colleagues for having shared them.
Sebastian Möller ISCA President
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| 2-8 | ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group: Under-resourced Languages (SIGUL) ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group: Under-resourced Languages (SIGUL) Created in April 2017, SIGUL is a joint Special Interest Group of the European Language Resources Association (ELRA) and of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). This year, SIGUL enters the fifth year and now has more than 300 members. The SIGUL Board is elected every two years, and last year SIGUL had a new Board officer: Chair and ISCA liaison representative: Sakriani Sakti (JAIST, Japan) Co-chair and ELRA liaison representative: Claudia Soria (CNR-ILC, Italy) Secretary: Maite Melero (Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Spain)
SIGUL has organized various events, including the Spoken Language Technologies for Under-resourced languages (SLTU) Workshop Series, which has been organized since 2008, and Collaboration and Computing for Under-Resourced Languages (CCURL), which has been organized as LREC Workshop since 2014. From this year, the tradition of CCURL-SLTU will be united into one SIGUL Workshop and planned to be held as a Satellite Workshop of LREC or INTERSPEECH. The 1st Annual Meeting of the ELRA/ISCA Special Interest Group on Under-Resourced Languages (SIGUL 2022) will be held as Satellite Workshop of LREC 2022, Marseille (FR), 24-25 June 2022. The SIGUL venue will provide a forum for the presentation of cutting-edge research in NLP/SLP for under-resourced languages to both academic and industry researchers, and also offer a venue where researchers in different disciplines and from varied backgrounds can fruitfully explore new areas of intellectual and practical development while honoring their common interest of sustaining less-resourced languages. Topics include but are not limited to:
We also invite position papers on methodological, ethical, or institutional issues. Important Dates:
More details can be found on the workshop web page: https://sigul-2022.ilc.cnr.it/
SIGUL Board Sakriani Sakti Claudia Soria Maite Melero
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| 2-9 | ISCA Language SIGS ISCA supports speech communication research activities in various languages. The individual languages have equal interest, but they may involve have different technical or scientific problems. For example, some languages are tonal, while others are not; Some languages have only one writing system, while others have several. In the ISCA community, we have 6 language Special Interest Groups (SIGs) for Chinese, French, Italian, Iberian, Indian, and Russian. Each SIG is organised by researchers who speak the language of interest as L1 and others who have a technical or scientific interest in the language. Each SIG sponsors domestic and international research activities, and representative members of the SIGs attend a Lang SIG meeting every year during the INTERSPEECH conference. In this meeting, recent activities of each SIG are reported, and new ideas are exchanged. We also review what ISCA can do for the SIGs and what the SIGs can do for ISCA. Each SIG has its own web page, and you can visit the pages here. Prof. Nobuaki MINEMATSU The University of Tokyo Japan
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| 2-10 | Report of a ISCA Geographical Outreach Online Workshop, Argentina by Prof. S. R. Mahadeva Prasanna Thursday, 15th December 2022, 9 - 11 am (AST)
ISCA Geographical Outreach Online Workshop was held in Argentina on Thursday, 15th December 2022 from 9 - 11 am (AST). The workshop was organized by Prof. Hugo Leonardo Rufiner, SINC, UNL, Santa Fe, Argentina. The faculty members, researchers and research scholars from different parts of Argentina working in the speech communication field joined the meeting. There was also a faculty from Costa Rica who attended the workshop. Another professor from the West Indies also participated in the workshop. Professors from Chile reported that they were interested in participating but had trouble connecting due to a strike at their university. From the ISCA board side Prof. Nobuaki MINEMATSU, Prof. Ioana Vasilescuand Prof. S. R. Mahadeva Prasanna attended the workshop.
After a brief introduction of their research interests, Prof. S. R. Mahadeva Prasanna welcomed all the participants of the workshop and gave an overview of different activities of ISCA and the interest of ISCA to enhance its activities in Argentina, in particular and Latin America, in general. Prof. Nobuaki MINEMATSU explained different opportunities available under special interest groups (SIGs) schemes, both for languages and topics. He also showed various links available in the ISCA website and explained how they can apply for SIGs, if they are interested. He also explained about the ISCA distinguished lecturers scheme available and how different groups in Argentina can benefit from them by arranging talks and also interaction. Prof. Ioana Vasilescuexplained about the various grants and supports available from ISCA side organizing various events like tutorial and research workshops, schools, workshops etc.
The attendees asked about different details and information specific to the organization and activities of ISCA. In particular they discussed possible ways of incorporating colleagues from South and Latin America. They also look for different alternatives at research collaboration with ISCA support by means of the creation of new Special Interests Groups (SIG). For example, for crowdsourcing to collect data on EEG signals related to speech production. The issue that high registration and travel costs are a major barrier preventing colleagues from these countries from participating in Interspeech conferences was also discussed. Finally the possibility to organize some ISCA Workshops/Conferences in South and Latin America is analyzed. Some participants volunteered to help create a new Subcommittee for these regions. The attendees proposed to organize another meeting in early 2023 to bring other colleagues and continue the discussions. Contact details from them will be shared in order to promote networking and collaboration.
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| 2-11 | ISCA Special Interest Group (SIG) 'Spoken Language Translation'
ISCA SIG “Spoken Language Translation” Aims. The SIG SLT covers all aspects of spoken language translation — simultaneous translation and interpretation, speech dubbing, speech-to-text translation, speech-to-speech translation, cross-lingual communication including paralinguistic, emotional or multimodal information, and related areas SIG SLT will (a) provide members of ISCA with a special interest in spoken language translation and its related areas with a means of exchanging news of recent research developments and other matters of interest in spoken language translation; (b) organize challenges and evaluation campaigns; (c) sponsor and organize the International Conference on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT), meetings, satellites, and tutorial workshops in spoken language translation, operating within the framework of ISCA's by-laws for SIGs; and (d) make available open-source code and data resources, best practices and tools, and evaluation metrics relevant to spoken language translation.
Motivation. Recent interest in speech translation and simultaneous translation by machine has been growing explosively, due to continued performance advances and a growing international need for simultaneous translation and interpretation, speech dubbing, speech-to-text translation, speech-to-speech translation, cross-lingual communication including paralinguistic, emotional or multimodal information, and related areas. The under-covered elements in the current research are, for instance, incremental simultaneous speech-to-speech translation, paralinguistic translation, speaking style translation across languages. The proposed SIG will be organized by the members who are interested in spoken language translation/interpretation from various related areas such as ASR, TTS, and MT. SIG SLT emerged from over two decades of organizing the International Conference on Spoken Language Translation (IWSLT) and its predecessor C-Star, scaling operations in response to significant growth in the field. The organizers of IWSLT and partners believe it is now time to join with ISCA by creating an ISCA SIG. IWSLT has a 15-year track record of profitability; it runs the premier benchmarking campaign on spoken language translation annually accompanied by an international scientific conference to present and discuss results.
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| 2-12 | ISCA-PEDRAC: a new service of ISCA. ISCA-PECRAC (Postdoc & Early Career Researcher Advisory Committee) 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:
Contacts: Yaru Wu (yaru.wu@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr) Berrak Sisman (berrak_sisman@sutd.edu.sg)
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| 2-13 | ISCA social networks 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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| 2-14 | Women in Speech Research ISCA is committed to supporting diversity in speech communication, and celebrating speech
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| 2-15 | SProSIG Officers Dear Fellow Members of SProSIG,
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| 2-16 | Prosody slides and lecture videos @ ACL 2021 Dear Speech Prosody SIG Members,
We are pleased to announce the open-source release of our tutorial on prosody, originally presented at ACL 2021. This includes about 400 powerpoint slides, with notes, downloadable from https://nigelward.com/prosody/ , and 29 video lectures based on this content, totaling about 4 hours, hosted at Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCFybA0SDVTjbQQRxJ1p2NnirCw_tk_z7 .
These we hope will be useful for - professors seeking slides to use for general-audiences talks - graduate students wanting to learn about aspects of prosody not taught at their institutions - engineers, clinicians and others seeking an overview of the field or some specific knowledge
Comments are welcome!
Gina-Anne Levow, Nigel G. Ward
Nigel Ward, Professor of Computer Science, University of Texas at El Paso CCSB 3.0408, +1-915-747-6827 https://www.cs.utep.edu/nigel/
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| 2-17 | Appel à candidatures Prix de thèse AFCP 2022 Appel à candidatures Prix de thèse AFCP 2022 Depuis 2004, l'Association Francophone de la Communication Parlée (AFCP) décerne un prix scientifique récompensant la grande qualité d'un travail de thèse francophone 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, en 2024. 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 « Recherches en PArole » (éditions CIPA). CALENDRIER Date limite de dépôt du dossier : 31 janvier 2023 Décision du jury AFCP : avril-mai 2023 Remise officielle du prix : JEP 2024 CONDITIONS DE CANDIDATURE À 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 1 er janvier et le 31 décembre 2022. 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.afcpparole.org/soumettre-une-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 des rapporteurs autorisant la soutenance et le rapport 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 2023___________
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