International Affairs

• Introduction
• What can be done via the international Affairs Committee?
• Current members and structure of the International Affairs Committee
  
• More information
  

Introduction

The International Affairs Committee is organized by the ISCA board and chaired by a board member responsible for different regions and international affairs. Currently this board member is professor Lin-shan Lee of National Taiwan University. The purpose of this committee is to extend the services of ISCA to different parts of the world, especially those regions where many speech researchers may not be able to attend Interspeech conferences and participate in the many speech research activities easily.

Currently the work of the International Affairs Committee is focused on four regions where the speech researchers are under-represented in most ISCA programs, and the major goal is to have a sub-committee for each of these regions to make region-specific efforts. These sub-committees are:

(a) Sub-committee on Eastern Europe
(b) Sub-committee on West Asia and North Africa
(c) Sub-committee on South Asia
(d) Sub-committee on Sub-Saharan Africa

In addition to the International Affairs Committee, another important channel for ISCA to extend its services to different parts of the world is via the Regional Branches (RBs) or Special Interest Groups (SIGs) focused on some specific languages, where the former (RBs) are actually a special type of the latter (SIGs). Currently there are six SIGs or RBs with such functionalities as listed below.

• Speech And Language Technology for MInority Langauges-SALTMIL
• SIG on Chinese Spoken Language Processing-SIG-CSLP
• Association Francophone de la Communication Parlee-AFCP
• Associazione Italiana di Scienze della Voce-AISV
• SIG on Iberian Languages-SIG-IL
• Indian Language Speech Processing-SIG-ILSP

More information about these RBs or SIGs can be found under the section of SIGs.

What can be Done via the International Affairs Committee

Below are possible initial actions which may be taken by the sub-committees of the International Affairs Committee to extend ISCA services to the specific regions.

(1) If in the regions there are any regional, national or local associations (or similar organizations) of speech researchers (or on related areas), it is possible to develop some sister association relationshipbetween such associations and ISCA, such that members of such organizations can become members of ISCA at reduced membership fees, and vice versa, and possibly something more.

(2) If in the regions there are some regional, national or local workshops, courses, meetings, conferences or events on speech related areas, it is possible to make them partially sponsored by ISCA, and invite via ISCA speakers and participants from other parts of the world to attend such events. It is also possible to hold some currently existing ISCA workshops or events in the regions in order to promote the activities in the regions.

(3)The sub-committees may recommend students or young researchers in the regions to apply for grants to attend conferences, workshops and events held worldwide sponsored by ISCA.

(4) The sub-committees may help to distribute relevant information about ISCA services to speech researchers in the regions, such as the ISCA Archive, the membership fee structure, grants, ISCApads, etc., especially those not limited to ISCA members, for example the abstracts of all papers in the ISCA Archive which are openly accessible from the Internet, the web-based services, and the many special interest groups on different areas which can be participated on-line without ISCA membership, etc..

(5) The sub-committees may help to promote and disseminate via ISCA channels to the global research communities information regarding the research activities in the regions to be better known worldwide, for example to distribute the journals or reports published in the regions, the call for papers of conferences and events held in the regions, information regarding major research projects in the regions, important research accomplishments in the regions and distinguished scientists and researchers in the regions, etc..

(6) The sub-committees may consider to establish one or more Regional Branch(es) (RBs) for the research community in the regions, or Special Interest Group(s) (SIGs) for research activities on the specific languages used in the regions, such that the RBs and SIGs can become more direct channels through which the ISCA services can be obtained. The Italian Language RB and the SIG on Chinese Spoken Language Processing are good examples for the former and the latter respectively. Without the RBs or SIGs the ISCA services can also be obtained, but relatively indirectly via the sub-committees for the regions.

(7) ISCA is announcing its distinguished lecturers program. The sub-committees may invite selected distinguished lecturers to travel to a few locations of the regions to give lectures to promote research activities in the regions on the cost of ISCA.

(8) The sub-committees may recommend distinguished researchers in the regions to participate in various research related activities, for example to review papers, to serve as journal editors or scientific committee members, session chairs or invited speakers of conferences and workshops, etc..

(9) The sub-committees may consider the special situations of the regions and propose to ISCA any other possible actions which may be taken to help the researchers in the regions, for example some approaches are specially useful for the regions or to handle some special difficulties or to solve some special problems for the regions, etc..

(10) Anything else helpful to the research activities in the regions can be proposed by the sub-committees and considered by the ISCA board.

Current Members and Structure of the International Affairs Committee

- Prof. Lin-shan Lee, National Taiwan University, Taipei (Taiwan, ROC)

Coordinator: -
- Prof. Rodmonga Potapova, Dept Head, Moscow Linguistic University, Moscow (Russia)

Members: -
- Dr. Andrey Ronzhin, Head of Speech Informatics Group, St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation, St. Petersburg (Russia)
- Prof. Taras Vintsiuk, Head of Speech Science and Technology Dept, Int. Research and Training Center of Information Technology and Systems, Kyiv (Ukraine)
- Prof. Boris Lobanov, Head of Speech Recognition and Synthesis Laboratory, National Academy of Sciences, Minsk (Belarus)
- Dr. Catalin Grigoras, National Institute of Forensic Expertise, Bucharest (Romania)
- Prof. Edward Shpilewski, Director, Institute of Computer Science, University of Bialystok, Bialystok (Poland)
- Prof. Jozef Juhar, Technical University of Kosice, Kosice (Slovakia)
- Prof. Slobodan Jovicic, Belgrade University, Belgrade (Serbia)
- Prof. Dimitar Popov, Konstantin Preslavsky University of Shumen, Shumen (Bulgaria)

Coordinator:
- Prof. Chafic Mokbel, University of Balamand, Balamand (Lebanon)

Members: -
- Dr. Ossama Emam, Manager, Human Language Technology, IBM Egypt Branch, Giza (Egypt)
- Dr. Mohamad Mrayati, Senior Advisor on Science and Technology, Ministry of Economy and Planning, Riyadh (Saudi Arabia)
- Prof. Mustafa Yaseen, Dean, Faculty of Information Technology, Amman University, Amman (Jordan)
- Prof. Oumayma Al Dakkak, Higher Institute of Applied Science and Technology, Damascus (Syria)

Coordinator:
- Prof. Thippur Sreenivas, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (India)

Members: -
- Prof. Rajeev Sangal, Director, International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad (India)
- Prof. S.R. Savithri, Head of Speech and Language Sciences, AII Institute of Speech and Hearing, Mysore (India)
- Prof. Udaya Narayana Singh, Director, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore (India)
- Dr. Virach Sornlertlamvanich, Thai Computational Linguistics Laboratory, NICT Asia Research Center, Pathumthani (Thailand)
- Dr. Hammam Riza, Science and Technology Network Information Center (IPTEKnet), Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), Jakarta (Indonesia)
- Dr. V. Ramasubramanian, Siemens Corporate Technology, Bangalore (India)
- Dr. A. R. Weerasinghe, Director, University of Colombo School of Computing, Colombo (Sri Lanka)

Coordinator:
- Prof. Justus Roux, Director, Center for Language and Speech Technology, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch (South Africa)

Members: -
- Dr. Tunde Adegbola, Associate lecturer, University of Ibadan, Ibadan (Nigeria) (also Executive Director of the African Languages Technology Initiative)
- Mr. Nimaan Abdillahi, Director, Djibouti Institute of Science and Information Technologies, Djibouti (Djibouti)

More information

More information including the speech research activities in the regions covered by the sub-committees can be found in the brief reports below:

• Sub-committee on Eastern Europe: Report 2007
• Sub-committee on West Asia and North Africa: Report 2007
• Sub-committee on South Asia: Report 2007
• Sub-committee on Sub-Saharan Africa: Report 2007

If you want more information, or if you have questions, comments or requests, please contact Professor Lin-shan Lee :