Subject: ESCApad #8 Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 15:56:46 GMT From: Isabel Trancoso To: esca_list@speech.inesc.pt ============================================================================ ESCApad number 8 November 24, 1998 ============================================================================ Dear ESCA members, Welcome to ESCApad #8. This issue includes several announcements: - latest news on ESCA SIGs - latest news on the Christian Benoit mentoring scheme - satellite symposium at ICSLP'98 on "Spoken Dialogue" co-sponsored by ESCA - ESCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on Interactive Dialogue in Multi-Modal Systems, June 1999 - satellite Workshop at Eurospeech'99: MIST (ESCA - NATO Tutorial and Research Workshop on Multi-Lingual Interoperability in Speech Technology) - research opportunities at ATR We hope to meet many of you in Australia! ESCA Greetings, Isabel Trancoso =========================================================================== ESCA SIGs The ESCA Special Interest Groups on Speech synthesis and on Audio-visual speech will meet during ICSLP'98. The exact dates and places will be announced during the conference. ESCA SIG on Speech Synthesis: The ESCA Board has approved the ESCA Special Interest Group for Speech Synthesis. The new SIG brings together ESCA members with a special interest in Speech Synthesis. The SIG will provide a means of exchanging news on recent research developments through a web site and the organisation of meetings and workshops, and will make available relevant resources. The application was supported by 57 members, and in the meantime 20 more researchers have added their support. The initial and temporary officers of the SIG are: * Wolfgang Hess, University of Bonn, Germany, chairman; * Nick Campbell, ATR, Japan, vice-chair and liaison representative; * Bernd Moebius, Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, USA, secretary. An election of the SIG's officers shall take place at ICSLP-98 in Sydney, Australia. Exact location and time are still to be finalised. Please watch out for pertinent postings at the Speech Synthesis Workshop in Jenolan Caves and at ICSLP-98. We hope to see you in Australia next week. Thanks for your support! Wolfgang Hess Nick Campbell Bernd Moebius =========================================================================== Christian Benoit Mentoring Scheme Following the untimely loss of our respected friend and colleague - Christian Benoit - the ESCA Board has decided to introduce a 'mentoring' scheme that will aim to support our less experienced colleagues in key aspects of their scientific work. It is expected that the scheme will be of particular help in preparing material and/or presentations for international workshops, conferences and journals. The Christian Benoit mentoring scheme will attempt to match the experience of volunteer senior scientists with requests for help and guidance from junior colleagues in different institutions around the world. Kind of support offered: Do you need help to submit a paper? Do you feel unfamiliar with language, terminology? Do you want to increase the chances that your work is accepted? A brokerage service has been put in place to provide support, provided by volunteer distinguished researchers covering different scientific areas, on: - pre-review of abstract submission and/or paper submission, to get early feedback on contents and structure of the contribution as well as on the use of language - identification of the proper publication platform The service is targeted specifically to young or less experienced researchers and aims at raising the quality of their contributions at the level requested for submission at important journals or conferences. How it works: People who would like to take advantage of this service should send a mail to the scheme coordinator (Roberto Billi - roberto.billi@cselt.it) describing the kind of support requested and providing the following information: - title of paper or abstract - scientific area in which the work falls - deadline for submission They will be quickly put in contact with an appropriate mentor, competent on the related scientific area, who will review the work and will provide feedback and suggestions for improving it. It is recommended to request support well in advance of the deadline for submission of the paper or abstract (at least 1 month) in order to leave sufficient time to the mentor for the review. Considering that the mentoring service is provided by volunteers who are quite busy people and who will use their spare time to do the work, every effort will be done to complete the process in a reasonable time. How to join the group of mentors: New mentors are highly welcomed, in order to have a better coverage of the different scientific areas and to increase the level of service offered. If you want to volunteer, you should send a message stating your interest and the research areas to which you could contribute. The message should be addressed to roberto.billi@cselt.it =========================================================================== 1998 International Symposium on Spoken Dialogue (ISSD-98) November 30, 1998 at Room 3, Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre (Chair: Prof. Hiroya Fujisaki, Co-chair: Prof. Michael Wagner) The 3rd International Symposium on Spoken Dialogue will be held in conjunction with ICSLP'98, from 9:00 to 17:00 on 30 November in Room 3 at the Sydney Convention & Exhibition Centre. The purpose of the Symposium is to facilitate the discussion on the state of the art of spoken dialogue methods and systems among those participants of ICSLP'98 who are interested in the field of spoken dialogue. This is the third one in a series of symposia that has been held since 1993. The first one was held in Tokyo in November 1993, the second one in Philadelphia in October 1996 (as a satellite meeting of ICSLP'96), each time with invited overviews and contributed papers. The program of ISSD-98 will consist of the following invited tutorials by distinguished researchers in this field, followed by a panel discussion. 8:00 - Registration 9:00 - 9:10 Opening Remarks 9:10 - 9:50 Seiichi Nakagawa (Toyohashi Institute of Technology, Japan) Architecture and Evaluation for Spoken Dialogue Systems 9:50 - 10:30 Lori Lamel (LIMSI-CNRS, France) Spoken Language Dialog System Development and Evaluation at LIMSI 10:30 - 11:00 --- morning tea --- 11:00 - 11:40 Florian Gallwitz et al.(Univ. of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany) The Erlangen Spoken Dialogue System EVAR: A State-of-the-Art Information Retrieval System 11:40 - 12:20 Harald Aust and Olaf Schroeer (Philips, Germany) Application Development with the Philips Dialog System 12:20 - 13:40 --- lunch break --- 13:40 - 14:20 Chin-Hui Lee (Lucent Technologies, U.S.A) Spoken Dialgue Processing Towards Telecommunication Applications 14:20 - 15:00 Toshiyuki Takezawa and Seiichi Yamamoto (ATR-ITRL, Japan) Dialogue Processing in a Speech-to-Speech Translation System Between Japanese and English 15:00 - 15:30 --- afternoon tea --- 15:30 - 17:00 Panel Discussion The meeting is open to all those who are interested, and the admission is free. In order to secure a seat and to obtain the proceedings, however, those who wish to attend are strongly suggested to register in advance by sending e-mail (Subject: ISSD-98 Registration) or fax to: Dr. Tuan Pham, ISSD-98 Secretariat School of Computing, University of Canberra e-mail: tuanp@ise.canberra.edu.au Fax: +61-2-6201-5231 The meeting will be sponsored by the "Research for the Future" Program of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, in cooperation with the Acoustical Society of Japan (ASJ), the Australian Speech Science and Technology Association (ASSTA), and the European Speech Communication Association (ESCA). =============================================================================== ESCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on INTERACTIVE DIALOGUE IN MULTI-MODAL SYSTEMS June 22 - 25, 1999 Kloster Irsee, Germany http://www.cpk.auc.dk/ids99/ TOPIC OF WORKSHOP The European Speech Communication Association (ESCA) in co-operation with The Center for PersonKommunikation (CPK) at Aalborg University, Denmark, Daimler Chrysler, Germany and Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, USA is pleased to announce a four days workshop on the topic of Interactive Dialogue in Multi-Modal Systems, which will be held at Kloster Irsee, Germany from June 22 to June 25 1999. The workshop will cover all aspects of Interactive Dialogue Systems, and it will emphasize interdisciplinary elements such as the integration of spoken language, image and gesture processing. Moreover, the workshop will focus on research and results, give information on tools and run prototype demonstrators of expected future application of multi-modal systems. After the successful ETRW on Spoken Dialogue Systems at Vigsx, Denmark in June 1995, it is our belief that it is now the time to arrange a workshop, where the latest developments within the area of interactive dialogue systems will be discussed among researchers and industrialists active in the area. WORKSHOP THEMES The workshop focus is on research issues, applications and tools concerned with the following interdisciplinary topics which are all part of general research and development of the main areas of Interactive Dialogue Systems. Papers may discuss theories, applications, evaluation, limitations, general tools and techniques. Discussion papers that critically evaluate approaches or processing strategies and prototype demonstrations are especially welcome. Speech and its Interpretation - automatic speech recognition and understanding - spontaneous, conversational and disfluent speech - spoken dialogue processing - speech and language modelling - dialogue design tools Gestures and their Interpretation - structure of gestural actions - communicative gestures - technical issues (gesture databases, etc.) Multi-modal HCI, input and output - integration of speech and images - integration of speech and gesture - semantics for integration - input devices (microphone arrays, cameras, trackers) Dialogue Systems Architecture and Interactions - problem solving strategies - technical integration management Applications - Call Center applications - central office and network application - mobile applications (e.g. in the car) Evaluation of Dialogue Strategies and Systems - Wizard-of-Oz experiments - Black - and Glass Box testing FORMAT OF THE WORKSHOP The format of the workshop will be a plenary mixture of oral and poster sessions. A number of tutorial lectures will be given by internationally recognised experts from the area of Interactive Dialogue Systems. All poster sessions will be opened by an oral summary by the session chair. A number of poster sessions will be succeeded by a discussion session focussing on the subject of the session. It is our belief that this general format will ensure a lively and valuable workshop. The organisers would like to encourage researchers and industrialists to take the opportunity to bring their applications as well as their demonstrator prototypes and design tools for demonstration to the workshop. If sufficient interest is shown, a special demonstrator/poster session will be organised and followed by a discussion session. The Proceedings from the workshop will be available at the opening of the workshop. The official language of the workshop and the Proceedings is English. A special issue of Speech Communication collecting full-paper versions of excellent papers presented at the workshop is planned. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE P Baggia (CSELT), L Boves (Uni. Nijmegen), R Carlson (KTH), S Furui (Tokyo Inst. of Techn.), K Hirose (Uni. Tokyo), J Hirschberg (Bell Labs), T Kawahara (Uni. Kyoto), P Mc Kevitt (Uni. Aalborg), Lin-Shan Lee (Nat. Taiwan Uni.), S Luperfoy (IET), H Mangold (Daimler Benz), R De Mori (Uni. Avignon), F Neel (LIMSI), R Pierraccini (AT&T Labs), D Sadek (CNET), Y Sagisaka (ATR), I Trancoso (INESC), I Wachsmuth (Uni. Bielefeld). Additional information at the web-page: http://www.cpk.auc.dk/ids99/ or the work shop secretariat where from where you can have a flyer sent to you. Please give name and address at fax +45 98 15 15 83, att. Paul Dalsgaard =============================================================================== ESCA - NATO Tutorial and Research Workshop on MULTI-LINGUAL INTEROPERABILITY IN SPEECH TECHNOLOGY 13-14 September 1999 Leusden, The Netherlands http://lands.let.kun.nl/mist TOPIC OF THE WORKSHOP The European Speech Communication Association (ESCA) in association with the NATO Research and Technology Organisation (RTO) by its Task Group on Speech and Language Technology (NATO/ AC232 (IST/TG-01) is pleased to announce a two-day workshop on the important topic of "Multi-lingual Interoperability in Speech Technology", which will be held in Leusden, The Netherlands on the 13th and 14th of September 1999. The workshop will cover all aspects which determine the performance of civil and military multilingual usage of speech technology systems. Central theme is the interoperability of systems developed for different languages or used by non-native speakers. This may include speech coding, speech recognition, topic spotting, speaker and language recognition, and text-to-speech synthesis. WORKSHOP THEMES The workshop will be concerned with current progress and understanding in the following areas: - non-native speakers and accent/dialect: speech recognition, synthesis, - cross-language applications: coder-code-books, loan words, names, language independent systems, - localization of speech recognizers, synthesis, and coding systems. SHARING OF A NON-NATIVE SPEAKER DATA BASE A data base is available for researchers who want to study non-native speech in four languages. We would encourage researchers to use this data for studies in their own disciplines, and present results at the workshop. In this way the same data will be looked at from many different perspectives. The data base consists of 75 Dutch speakers. For each speaker 10 sentences in four languages are available (Dutch as native language, English, French, and German). The data base is available only for those who will report results at the workshop and for non commercial use. FORMAT OF THE WORKSHOP The workshop will consist of keynote presentations by renowned scientists , and oral and poster presentations by authors of accepted papers. All sessions will be plenary, directed discussions will be included. It is intended that the workshop should permit the maximum interchange between participants. This will also be achieved by holding the workshop in a small conference centre, situated somewhat remote from town. SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE Robert Billi Italy Herve Bourlard Switzerland Lou Boves The Netherlands Dirk van Compernolle Belgium Sadaoki Furui Japan Melvyn Hunt United Kingdom Denis Johnston United Kingdom Lori Lamel France Tony Robinson United Kingdom Christelle Sorin France Isabel Trancoso Portugal Marc Zissman United States ============================================================================= Research opportunities at ATR: The ATR Interpreting Telecommunications Research Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan are offering the following one-year research opportunities, starting early in 1999: 1: "Signal Processing for High-definition Speech Synthesis" 2: "Statistical Analysis and Prediction of Prosodic Characteristics in Large Speech Corpora (of English and/or Japanese)" ATR-ITL is a large research institute located in the Keihanna Science Park in the countryside between Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. It is predominantly government funded but has strong links with both industry and academia. The lab is very international in character, with approximately 30% of researchers coming from outside Japan. English and Japanese are the main languages. State-of-the-art machines and data are available. Candidates with exceptional ability and relevant experience should contact Nick Campbell (nick@itl.atr.co.jp) giving reasons why they should be considered. A PhD is not an essential requirement, but proof of excellence and suitable references should be available. ============================================================================= 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: Isabel.Trancoso@inesc.pt =============================================================================