A reminder to start thinking about

• ISCA Fellow Nominations for 2025: web page here.
• ISCA Distinguished Lecturer for 2025-26: web page here

Dear colleagues,

the ISCA/ITG Workshop on Diversity in Large Speech and Language Models will be organized by Technische Universität Berlin, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the German Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) Berlin on February 20, 2025 in Berlin, Germany.

Topics which we aim to address include but are not limited to

• User diversity: Which aspects of human speech and language production affect the performance of large foundation models? In which way, and for which tasks?
• Language use: How are large language models able to cope with different languages, dialects, and sociolects? How do they deal with code switching?
• Human adaptation: How does the use of large language models affect language comprehension, as well as speech and language production? Which alignment effects occur, and in which time spans?
• Model adaptation: How do models need to be designed to better cope with speech and language diversity? How do training and finetuning affect model performance?
• Inclusion: What data and technologies are necessary to better cope with diversity in large speech and language models?

We invite both experimental and positional papers addressing these and other related research questions.
The workshop will consist of a number of oral presentations and discussion panels. Accepted speakers are invited to submit a short or long paper which will be published online after the workshop.

Important dates:

• Abstract submission: 13 December 2024
• Notification of acceptance: 10 January 2025
• Short or long paper submission: 14 February 2025

More details can be found here.

Sebastian Möller

Nominations are open for the 2025 ISCA Medal for Scientific Achievement.  Nominations must be submitted by November 1 to ISCA Secretariat at secretariat@isca-speech.org.

We cordially invite all ISCA members to the General Assembly.  We are looking forward to seeing you in Kos.

2024 ISCA General Assembly

Date: Monday September 2, 2024, at 17:30 - 19:30

Venue: Panacea Amphitheater, Kipriotis Hotels & Conference Center (KICC),
      Kos, Greece

ISCA Fellows 2024

The following colleagues have been elected ISCA fellows. Their titles will be conferred formally at Interspeech 2024. congratulations to them!

Takayuki Arai  Dept. of Information and Communication Sciences, Sophia University, Tokyo

For contributions to developing models of speech production and applying them for speech science, technology, pathology and education

Kay Berkling  DHBW Mosbach,  Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University

For her contributions to education, improving childhood learning and boosting diversity through interactive technology

Carlos Busso  University of Texas at Dallas

For contributions to speech and multimodal affective signal processing and their technology applications

Sebastian Moller    Technische Universität Berlin, and German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, Berlin

For sustained contributions to the evaluation of speech transmission, processing, and speech technology

Bhiksha Raj  Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA

For contributions to robust speech recognition and other areas in speech and audio processing.

 

Torbjorn Svendsen         NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology

  For contributions to speech processing research and long-standing   contributions to the speech community

 

Petra Wagner                    Universität Bielefeld

 For contributions to multimodal prosody, conversational interaction, and speech synthesis.

Dear ISCA member,

Unfortunately, at regular time intervals, e-mails are being send to individuals within our community that seemingly come from the president (or another ISCA board member), asking for help and/or money in vague terms.

Please note, no ISCA board member will ever send emails to ask for money nor would we ask for help in vague terms. If we ask for help it will be clear what we ask of you. If you are unsure whether the email is legit, assume it is not. If we do need your help, we will reach out again.

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about this. Please ignore these e-mails.

Best wishes,

Odette Scharenborg, ISCA President

ISCA is currently moving to a new web portal: WildApricot. This includes a new website, and a new portal for membership services. The new website will already be more informative than the old one, and will later enable more active participation from our community (SIGs, etc.), as we want to make it more interactive and target-oriented.

For the time being, parts of our services will still need to be accessed through portals on our old system (linked from the new website), including the paper archive, and applications for workshops and grants. We are working on moving these functionalities to the new platform as well.

Please explore the new website and get an impression of ISCA activities and services. Become involved in shaping the new system for the benefit of our community.

The submission portal for Interspeech 2024, which will take place in Kos, Greece, is now open. The deadline for registering a paper is 2nd of March, for finalising the paper 10th of March. More details on https://interspeech2024.org/.

In preparation for Interspeech 2024, we are currently searching for reviewers to evaluate submitted manuscripts.

If you are not already a reviewer for ISCA conferences, we encourage you to sign up through the ISCA Reviewer Portal.

Click here to see the criteria for eligibility as a reviewer and access to the portal.

Please use the same email address as your CMT account. If you do not have a CMT account, you will need to create one, as reviewing will take place fully within CMT.

To help conference organisers match the papers allocated to you, please also register to the Toronto Paper Matching System using the same email address as in CMT. This should result in you being assigned papers that better match your interests and expertise.

Nominations 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 5 January 2024 using the nomination form.  The ISCA Board will select the winner by 1 February and announce the winner in the March 2024 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 5 January 2024 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 2024 using 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. 

More information can be found on the ISCA Honors webpage.