Subject: ESCApad #10 Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 18:04:22 GMT From: Isabel Trancoso To: esca_list@speech.inesc.pt ============================================================================ ESCApad number 10 January 29, 1999 ============================================================================ Dear ESCA members, Welcome to ESCApad #10. Here's a summary of our current issue: - ESCA Board meeting - How to contact ESCA - SynSIG News #1 - Short announcements ESCA Greetings, Isabel Trancoso ============================================================================= ESCA BOARD The next ESCA Board meeting will take place in Budapest, February 17-19, just before the meeting of the Scientific Committee of Eurospeech'99, hosted by Maria Gosy and Geza Nemeth. As usual, ESCA members are invited to bring points to the attention of the Board. ============================================================================= HOW TO CONTACT ESCA New aliases have been installed to make it easier for members to contact the right person in the ESCA Board. president@esca-speech.org - Roger Moore (President) treasurer@esca-speech.org - Paul Dalsgaard (Treasurer) info@esca-speech.org - Wolfgang Hess (Secretariat) edu@esca-speech.org - Roberto Billi (Training & Education) sig@esca-speech.org - Gerrit Bloothooft (SIGs) etrw@esca-speech.org - Rolf Carlson (Workshops) conf@esca-speech.org - George Kokkinakis (Conferences) grant@esca-speech.org - Frederic Bimbot (Grants & Awards) publicity@esca-speech.org - Isabel Trancoso (Publications & Promotions) Requests concerning membership and Speech Communication should be forwarded to the Secretariat. ============================================================================= SynSIG News #1 (28 Jan 1999) Introduction SynSIG, the ESCA Special Interest Group for Speech Synthesis, made its official start on December 2, 1998, when a formal meeting was held at ICSLP-98 in Sydney. The meeting had been preceeded by several months of informal discussion via email and by a preparatory meeting at the Speech Synthesis Workshop in Jenolan Caves. ESCA approved the SIG in August 1998. The Sydney meeting was attended by some 60 researchers involved or interested in speech synthesis. Activities: SynSIG was formed to promote activities related to furthering the science of speech synthesis. These activities are intended to include the following. - Evaluation: The broadly stated goal of the evaluation activities of the SIG is that of stimulating evaluations that benefit science and help both individual and business consumers of synthesis to select systems that meet their needs. A special web page for news and information concerning speech synthesis evaluation will be set up at the main SIG web site. A preliminary statement and rationale for the evaluation activities of the SIG are now accessible at . - Collaborative experiments: setup and design for collaborative international and multilingual experiments. - Resources: disseminate or help disseminate scientific articles, software tools, speech corpora, and other relevant material. - Teaching resources: collection and exchange of tools and resources for teaching purposes. - Student exchange: organizing the exchange of research students. - Standardization: Effective communication should be established between the speech synthesis community and other groups and disciplines (e.g., speech coding), in particular in the area of standardization. The SIG will set up and maintain a web site, to enhance the exchange of news on recent research developments in speech synthesis and to make available relevant resources (databases, corpora, tools, reference lists, etc.). The main web site (under ESCA's home page at ) will have several mirrors to facilitate accessibility. A temporary version of the SIG's web site can be found at http://www.itl.atr.co.jp/cocosda/synthesis/synsig.html Formal Business: A Steering Committee was appointed in Sydney; committee members are Wolfgang Hess (University of Bonn, Germany), Chair; Nick Campbell (ATR, Japan), Vice-Chair and ESCA liaison; Bernd Moebius (University of Stuttgart, Germany), Secretary and Treasurer; Jan van Santen (Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, USA), Liaison for Evaluation Issues. Despite the fact that some 60 researchers attended the Sydney meeting, a significant number of people who had responded to the initial SIG proposal could not attend the meeting. Therefore, the current steering committee was confirmed for one year. A nomination and election procedure for the future committee will be implemented on the SIG's web site. Nominations will be called for in the summer of 1999; all members of the SIG will be invited to propose suitable candidates, either by email or at the planned SIG meeting at Eurospeech in Budapest (Sept. 1999). Immediately following Eurospeech, official elections will be held by email. Membership: Membership is open to anyone with an interest in speech synthesis and can be applied for by sending email to Nick Cambell or Bernd Moebius . ============================================================================= SHORT ANNOUNCEMENTS MATISSE: The programme for the ESCA/SOCRATES workshop MATISSE - Method And Tool Innovations for Speech Science Education - is now available on the web: http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/matisse/first.htm A registration form for the workshop, to be held at University College London on April 16-17, can be found at that site as well. ======================== Phd Thesis: A Phd Thesis (in French) named: "Modeles dependants du contexte et methodes de fusion de donnees appliques a la reconnaissance de la parole par modeles hybrides HMM/MLP" is available at the following address: http://tcts.fpms.ac.be/ in publications. Olivier Deroo Faculte Polytechnique de Mons Email: deroo@tcts.fpms.ac.be ======================== Request for information: I am interested in details of Speech and Language Pathology programs in Asian universities, and SLP professional associations (national and regional). In particular, any leads you can give me on China would be greatly appreciated. Caroline Bowen (Speech-Language Pathologist). http://members.tripod.com/Caroline_Bowen/home.html mailto: cbowen@tig.com.au ======================== SPECOM'98 Proceedings: Because of a problem on the e-mail machine of St.-Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation, those who sent a request for the SPECOM'98 proceedings or related matters should renew their request, as their initial e-mail may have been lost. ============================================================================= All additional information at the ESCA web-site: http://www.esca-speech.org The ESCA secretariat can be contacted at: info@esca-speech.org For message distribution at esca_list contact: publicity@esca-speech.org =============================================================================