ISCApad128

Dear ISCA Member,

As you may know, the ISCA Board currently has eleven members from nine countries (see full list below). Members are elected to the Board for a period of four years and no member may serve on the Board for more than two consecutive terms.
 
Eva Hajicová and Lin-shan Lee have served on the ISCA Board for two terms of four years and will leave the board in September 2009. 

The following persons have now served for one term of four years: Isabel Trancoso, (President), Jean-François Bonastre (Vice President, ITRW Coordinator)
David House (Secretary) and Michael Picheny (SIG Coordinator and Industrial Liaison). They have all indicated their willingness to serve the Board for another four years if re-elected.

According to the ISCA by-laws, elections to the Board may take place in April or May every two years. Nominations can be made by the Board and by each ISCA member.

The Board has recently decided to increase its size from 11 to 14 Board members to better meet the growing activities of our association and will therefore be electing nine people to the Board at the election that will be held in April-May 2009. The Board would therefore like to invite further nominations from the ISCA membership. As the ISCA statutes currently specify a maximum of two Board members from any single country, no members residing in Germany can be nominated this time.  

Nominations to the Board are to be made with the support of three members of ISCA and with agreement from the candidate in either written or electronic form.

Members who are elected to the Board will be expected to take up one of the areas of responsibility, to commit time to furthering the work of ISCA in their area, to attend the two-day Board meeting that takes place in conjunction with the annual INTERSPEECH conference and to participate in additional virtual meetings during the year (teleconferences).  All candidates should be aware of these obligations and commit themselves to fulfilling them before agreeing to be nominated.

The areas of responsibility listed below were discussed by the Board at the meeting in Brisbane. The current Board composition does not cover all these duties, even taking into consideration the great help of ex-officio members such as Wolfgang Hess (Archive) and Christian Wellekens (ISCApad).  This is also one of the reasons for increasing the number of Board members.

New list of areas of responsibility:

President, Treasurer, Secretary, Membership Affairs and Elections, Conference Liaison, Conference Recruitment, Archive, Grants, Student Liaison, Awards and Fellows, Workshops, SIG (topic oriented), SIG (Language/region oriented), International Affairs, Distinguished Lecturers, Training and Education, Website, ISCApad, Public Relations, Liaison with other Organizations, Industry Liaison.

As both ISCA President (Isabel Trancoso) and ISCA Secretary (David House) are standing for reelection, Bernd Möbius (ISCA Treasurer) has agreed to supervise the election.

The Board will accept nominations either from proposers or self-nominations, as long as indication of support is provided. Please send your nomination(s) to the ISCA Secretariat secretariat@isca-speech.org   BY MARCH 20TH (Friday) with the following information:
 
Full Name and Title:
Position and Institution:
Research area:
Indication of willingness to serve if elected:
E-mail:
URL:
Short biography (one paragraph)
Short statement (one paragraph, describing the work they would intend to do on the Board)
Names and emails of three proposers (ISCA members).
 
Please do not hesitate to contact us if you require further information about the nomination process or about duties of ISCA Board members.
 
Best regards,
 
Isabel Trancoso  (ISCA President)      

David House (ISCA Secretary)

Bernd Möbius (ISCA Treasurer)

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Current ISCA Board membership

Isabel Trancoso, Portugal, (President)

Jean-François Bonastre, France, (Vice President, ITRW Coordinator)
David House, Sweden (Secretary)
Bernd Möbius, Germany (Treasurer)

Alan Black, USA (Grants and Awards Coordinator)

Eva Hajicová, Czech Republic (Membership Services, Fellow Program Coordinator)

Lin-shan Lee, Taiwan (International Affairs Coordinator)

Helen Meng, Hong Kong (Student Affairs Coordinator, Coordinator for Website and Publications)

Michael Picheny, USA, (SIG Coordinator and Industrial Liaison)

Yoshinori Sagisaka, Japan, (Liaison with other Organizations)

Tanja Schultz, Germany (Conference Coordinator)

-------------------------------------------------------------

Board members whose second term is ending

Eva Hajicová, Czech Republic, 2009 (Second term)
Lin-shan Lee, Taiwan R.O.C., 2009 (Second term)

Board members whose first term is ending

 Jean-François Bonastre, France, 2009 (First term)
David House, Sweden, 2009 (First term)
Michael Picheny, USA, 2009 (First term)
Isabel Trancoso, Portugal, 2009 (First term)

Board members whose term continues

Alan Black, USA, 2011 (First term)

Helen Meng, Hong Kong, 2011 (First term)

Bernd Möbius, Germany, 2011 (First term)

Yoshinori Sagisaka, Japan, 2011 (First term)

Tanja Schultz, Germany, 2011 (First term)

------------------------------------------------------

New ISCA Fellows will be soon elected. Informations on ISCA fellowship can be found on our webpage www.isca-speech.org/fellows.html

We urge ISCA members to recommend  candidates by sending  nomination forms.  Please pay attention the deadline is February 28th.

New nominations forms will be soon available on our website www.isca-speech.org. 

An ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on NON-LINEAR SPEECH PROCESSING (NOLISP'09) 25/06/2009 - // DeadLine: 20090315 Vic Catalonia Espagne http://nolisp2009.uvic.cat  After the success of NOLISP'03 held in Le Croisic, NOLISP'05 in Barcelona and NOLISP'07 in Paris, we are pleased to present NOLISP'09 to be held at the University of Vic (Catalonia, Spain) on June 25-27, 2009. The workshop will feature invited lectures by leading researchers as well as contributed talks. The purpose of NOLISP'09 is to present and discuss novel ideas, works and results related to alternative techniques for speech processing, which depart from mainstream approaches.  Prospective authors are invited to submit a 3 to 4 page paper proposal in English, which will be evaluated by the Scientific C! ommittee. Final papers will be due one month after the workshop to be included in the CD-ROM proceedings. Contributions are expected (but not restricted to) the following areas:  Non-linear approximation and estimation Non-linear oscillators and predictors Higher-order statistics Independent component analysis Nearest neighbours Neural networks Decision trees Non-parametric models Dynamics of non-linear systems Fractal methods Chaos modelling Non-linear differential equations  All fields of speech processing are targeted by the workshop, namely: Speech production, speech analysis and modelling, speech coding, speech synthesis, speech recognition, speaker identification/verification, speech enhancement/separation, speech perception, etc.  ADDITIONAL INFORMATION  Proceedings will be published in Springer-Verlag's Lecture Notes Series in Computer Science (LNCS). LNCS is published, in parallel to the printed books, in full-text electronic form. All contributions should  be original, and must not have been previously published, nor be under review for presentation elsewhere. A special issue of Speech Communication (Elsevier) on “Non-Linear and Non-Conventional Speech Processing” will be also published after the workshop  Detailed instructions for submission to NOLISP'09 and further informations will be available at the conference Web site (http://nolisp2009.uvic.cat).  IMPORTANT DATES: * March 15, 2009 - Submission (full papers) * April 30, 2009 - Notification of acceptance * September 30, 2009 - Final (revised) paper

                           * INTERSPEECH 2009 *

Chiba, Japan
Conference Website
ISCA is pleased to announce that INTERSPEECH 2010 will take place in Makuhari-Messe, Chiba, Japan, September 26-30, 2010. The event will be chaired by Keikichi Hirose (Univ. Tokyo), and will have as a theme "Towards Spoken Language Processing for All - Regardless of Age, Health Conditions, Native Languages, Environment, etc."

Interspeech 2011

Palazzo dei Congressi,  Italy, August 27-31, 2011.

Organizing committee

Piero Cosi (General Chair),

Renato di Mori (General Co-Chair),

Claudia Manfredi (Local Chair),

Roberto Pieraccini (Technical Program Chair),

Maurizio Omologo (Tutorials),

Giuseppe Riccardi (Plenary Sessions).

More information www.interspeech2011.org

 This section shows recent books whose titles been have communicated by the authors or editors.

Also some advertisement for recent books in speech are included.

Book presentation is written by the authors and not by this newsletter editor or any  voluntary reviewer.

Opened positions/internships at Microsoft: Norwegian, Finnish, Italian, French, English, Polish Linguists (M/F)

MLDC – Microsoft Language Development Center, a branch of the Microsoft Product Group that develops Speech Recognition and Synthesis Technologies, situated in Porto Salvo, Portugal (http://www.microsoft.com/portugal/mldc), is seeking full-time temporary language experts in the following languages:

-          Norwegian language (Bokmal variety)

-          Finnish

-          Italian

-          English (UK)

-          French (France)

-          Polish

The contracts range from 2-6 months and the scope of them is to work in speech technology related development projects. The successful candidate should have the following requirements:

·         Be a native or near native speaker (for each of the required language)

·         Have a university degree in Linguistics or related field

·         Have an advanced level of English (oral and written)

·         Have some experience in working with Speech Technology/Natural Language Processing/Linguistics, either in academia or in industry

·         Have some computational ability – no programming is required, but he/she should be comfortable working with MS Windows and MS Office tools

·         Have team work experience

·         Willing to work in Porto Salvo (near Lisbon) for the duration of the contract

·         Willing to work in a multicultural and multinational team across the globe

·         Willing to start immediately

To apply, please submit your resume and a brief statement describing your experience and abilities to Daniela Braga: i-dbraga@microsoft.com

We will only consider electronic submissions.

Deadline for submissions: Opened until filled.

Title:      Assistant Professor Position at EURECOM
            in Multimedia content analysis and processing
Department: Multimedia Communications
URL:        http://www.eurecom.fr/research/
Start date: September 2008

Description:
Research in the Department currently focuses on several aspects of the processing of Multimedia Content:
• Video analysis and information filtering,
• Image Processing with application to 3D Face Cloning, watermarking and
biometrics,
• Speech and sound processing.
The new faculty is expected to undertake research in close collaboration with the existing activities and to participate in the teaching program for Master students. Extensions of the current research areas are encouraged.

Requirements:
The candidates must have a Ph.D. in computer science or electrical engineering with a solid background in signal processing and statistical analysis. The ideal candidate will have an established record of conducting research activities at the international level, and a proven record of collaboration with academic and industrial partners in national and European programs or equivalent. Excellence in research is a constant requirement for EURECOM. A strong commitment to excellence in research and teaching is essential.

Applications:
Send, by email, a letter of motivation, a resume including a list of publications, the names of 3 references and a copy of the three most important publications.

Contact:        Prof. Bernard Merialdo
Postal address: 2229 route des Crêtes
                BP 193
                06904 Sophia Antipolis cedex
                France
Email address:  Bernard.Merialdo@eurecom.fr
Web address:    http://www.eurecom.fr/main/institute/job.fr.htm
Phone:          +33/0 4 93 00 81 29
Fax:            +33/0 4 93 00 82 00

Located in the heart of Sophia Antipolis technology park, EURECOM is a graduate school and a Research center in Communication Systems, founded in 1991 by TELECOM ParisTech (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications) and EPFL (Swiss federal institute of Lausanne) in a consortium form, combining academic and industrial partners. Teaching and research activities of EURECOM focus on three areas: networking and security, mobile communications and multimedia communications. EURECOM has a strong international scope and strategy. 

Dans le cadre du projet RAPSODIS, l'IRISA recrute un post-doc pour une période de 12 mois. Le sujet porte sur l'intégration de connaissances syntaxiques et sémantiques dans un système de transcription automatique de la parole (voir les détails en fin de message). Le poste est à pourvoir d'ici la fin de l'année. Les personnes intéressés sont invités à contacter Guillaume Gravier (guig@irisa.fr) et/ou Pascale Sébillot (pascale.sebillot@irisa.fr).

SENIOR STAFF OPENING AT THE ICSI SPEECH GROUP

The International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) invites applications for a senior staff position in its speech research group. Successful applicants must have significant post-PhD experience, and a world-class research reputation.  Candidates must also have demonstrated ability to grow and manage a strong research effort. A successful track record with obtaining funding for the chosen area is essential. 

The ICSI Speech Group (including its predecessor, the ICSI Realization Group) has been a source of novel approaches to speech processing since 1988. ICSI’s speech group is well known for its efforts in speech recognition (particularly in neural network approaches and novel forms of feature extraction), as well as in speaker recognition, diarization, and speech understanding. It has close ties to research efforts in machine translation on the Berkeley campus, and to the STAR lab at SRI for the complete range of its research. It also works closely with several European labs, particularly IDIAP in Switzerland and to the University of Edinburgh.

ICSI is an independent not-for-profit Institute located a few blocks from the Berkeley campus of the University of California. It is closely affiliated with the University, and particularly with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department. Students, faculty, and administrative colleagues from the University all play a key role at the Institute. In addition to its Speech Group, areas of current strength in the Institute include: Artificial Intelligence (primarily in natural language), Internet research (primarily in architecture and internet security), and Algorithms (primarily associated with problems in bioinformatics and networking). We also have new activities in Computer Vision and Computer Architecture. See http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu to learn more about ICSI.

Applications should include a cover letter, a vita, the names of at least 3 references (with both postal and email addresses), and a research statement. Applications should be sent by email to speechjob@icsi.berkeley.edu and by postal mail to

Nelson Morgan (re Senior Search)

ICSI

1947 Center Street, Suite 600

Berkeley, CA 94704

ICSI is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer. Applications from women and minorities are especially encouraged. Hiring is contingent on eligibility to work in the United States.

12 PhD Positions and 2 Post Doc Positions available in

the Marie Curie International Training Network on

Speech Communication with Adaptive LEarning (SCALE)

SCALE is a cooperative project between

·        IDIAP Research Institute in Martigny, Switzerland (Prof Herve Bourlard)

·        Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands (Prof Lou Boves, Dr Louis ten Bosch, Dr-ir Bert Cranen, Dr O. Scharenborg)

·        RWTH Aachen, Germany (Prof Hermann Ney, Dr Ralf Schlüter)

·        Saarland University, Germany (Prof Dietrich Klakow, Dr John McDonough)

·        University of Edinburgh, UK (Prof Steve Renals, Dr Simon King, Dr Korin Richmond, Dr Joe Frankel)

·        University of Sheffield, UK (Prof Roger Moore, Prof Phil Green, Dr Thomas Hain, Dr Guido Sanguinetti) .

Companies like Motorola or Philips Speech Recognition Systems/Nuance are associated partners of the program.

Each PhD position is funded for three years and degrees can be obtained from the participating academic institutions. 

Distinguishing features of the cooperation include:

·        Joint supervision of dissertations by lecturers from two partner institutions

·        While staying with one institution for most of the time, the program includes a stay at a second partner institution either from academic or industry for three to nine month 

·        An intensive research exchange program between all participating institutions

PhD and Post Doc projects will be in the area of

·        Automatic Speech Recognition

·        Machine learning

·        Speech Synthesis

·        Signal Processing

·        Human speech recognition

The salary of a PhD position is roughly 33.800€ per year. There are additional mobility (up to 800€/month) and travel allowances (yearly allowance). Applicants should hold a strong university degree which would entitle them to embark on a doctorate (Masters/diploma or equivalent) in a relevant discipline, and should be in the first four years of their research careers. As the project is funded by a EU mobility scheme, there are also certain mobility requirements.

Each Post Doc position is funded for two years. The salary is approximately 52000€ per year. Applicants must have a doctoral degree at the time of recruitment or equivalent research experience. The research experience may not exceed 5 years at the time of appointment.

Women are particularly encouraged to apply.

Deadlines for applications:

January 1, 2009

April 1, 2009

July 1, 2009

September 1, 2009.

After each deadline all submitted applications will be reviewed and positions awarded until all positions are filled.

Applications should be submitted at http://www.scale.uni-saarland.de/ .

To be fully considered, please include:

- a curriculum vitae indicating degrees obtained, disciplines covered

(e.g. list of courses ), publications, and other relevant experience

- a sample of written work (e.g. research paper, or thesis,

preferably in English)

- copies of high school and university certificates, and transcripts

- two references (e-mailed directly to the SCALE office

(Diana.Schreyer@LSV.Uni-Saarland.De) before the deadline)

- a statement of research interests, previous knowledge and activities

in any of the relevant research areas.

In case an application can only be submitted by regular post, it should

be sent to:

SCALE office

Diana Schreyer

Spoken Language Systems, FR 7.4

C 71 Office 0.02

Saarland University

P.O. Box 15 11 50

D-66041 Saarbruecken

Germany

If you have any questions, please contact Prof. Dr. Dietrich Klakow

(Dietrich.Klakow@LSV.Uni-Saarland.De).

Assistant Professor Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago  ########################################################  Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (http://www.tti-c.org) is a philanthropically endowed academic computer science institute, dedicated to basic research and graduate education in computer science.  TTI-C opened for operation in 2003 and by 2010 plans to have 12 tenured and tenure track faculty and 18 research (3-year) faculty. Regular faculty will have a teaching load of at most one course per year and research faculty will have no teaching responsibilities.  Applications are welcome in all areas of computer science, but TTI-C is currently focusing on a number of areas including speech and language processing.  For all positions we require a Ph.D. degree or Ph.D. candidacy, with the degree conferred prior to date of hire.  Applications received after December 31 may not get full consideration.  Applications can be submitted online at http://www.tti-c.org/facultyapplication

Poste d'ingénieur CDD : environnement intelligent

Ingenieur - CDD

DeadLine: 15/02/2008

olivier.pietquin@supelec.fr

http://ims.metz.supelec.fr/spip.php?article99

Un poste d'ingénieur CDD de 18 mois est ouvert sur le campus de Metz de Supélec. Le candidat s’intégrera au sein de l’équipe « Information, Multimodalité & Signal » (http://ims.metz.supelec.fr). Cette équipe composée de 15 personnes est active dans les domaines du traitement numérique du signal et de l’information (traitement statistique du signal, apprentissage numérique, méthodes d’inspiration biologique), de la représentation des connaissances (fouille de données, analyse et apprentissage symbolique) et du calcul intensif et distribué. Le poste vise un profil permettant l’implémentation matérielle intégrée des méthodes développées au sein de l’équipe dans des applications liées aux environnements intelligents ainsi que leur maintenance. Le campus de Metz s’est en effet doté d’une plateforme en vraie grandeur reproduisant une pièce intelligente intégrant caméras, microphones, capteurs infrarouges, interfaces homme-machine (interface vocale, interface cerveau-machine), robo!

 ts et moyens de diffusion d’information. Il s’agira de réaliser une plateforme intégrée permettant de déployer des démonstrations rapidement dans cet environnement et de les maintenir.

Profil recherché :

– diplôme d’ingénieur en informatique, ou équivalent universitaire

– expérience de travail dans le cadre d’équipes multidisciplinaires,

– une bonne pratique de l’anglais est un plus.

Plus d'informations sont disponibles sur le site de l'équipe (http://ims.metz.supelec.fr)

Faire acte de candidature (CV+lettre) auprès de O. Pietquin : olivier.pietquin@supelec.fr.

http://gdr-isis.org/rilk/gdr/Kiosque/poste.php?jobid=3010

2009 PhD Research Fellowships 

=============================

The Adaptive Multimodal Information and  Interface  Research Lab

(casa.disi.unitn.it) at University of Trento (Italy) has several

PhD Research fellowships in the following areas:

                Statistical Machine Translation                

                Natural Language Processing    

                Automatic Speech Recognition

                Machine Learning

                Spoken/Multimodal Conversational Systems

We are looking for students with _excellent_ academic records

and relevant technical background. Students with EE, CS Master degrees

( or equivalent ) are welcome as well other related disciplines will

be considered. Prospective students are encouraged to look at the lab

website to search for current and past research projects.

PhD research fellowships benefits are described in the graduate school

website (http://ict.unitn.it/disi/edu/ict).

The  applicants should be fluent in _English_. The Italian language

competence is optional and applicants are encouraged to acquire

this skill during training. All applicants should have very good

programming skills. University of Trento is an equal opportunity employer.

The selection of candidates will be open until positions are filled.

Interested applicants should send their CV along with their

statement of research interest, transcript records and three reference

letters to :

                Prof. Dr.-Ing. Giuseppe Riccardi

        Email: riccardi@disi.unitn.it

-------------------

About University of Trento and Information Engineering and Computer

 Science Department

The University of Trento is constantly ranked as

 premiere Italian graduate university institution (see www.disi.unitn.it).

Please visit the DISI Doctorate school website at http://ict.unitn.it/edu/ict

DISI Department

DISI has a strong focus on Interdisciplinarity with professors from

different faculties of the University (Physical Science, Electrical

Engineering, Economics, Social Science, Cognitive Science, Computer Science)

 with international background.

DISI aims at exploiting the complementary experiences present in the

various research areas in order to develop innovative methods and

technologies, applications and advanced services.

English is the official language.

--

Prof. Ing. Giuseppe Riccardi

Marie Curie Excellence Leader

Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science

University of Trento

Room D11, via Sommarive 14

38050 Povo di Trento, Italy

tel  : +39-0461 882087

email: riccardi@dit.unitn.it

The Evaluation and Language Distribution Agency (ELDA) is offering a 6-month to 1-year internship in Human Language Technology for the Arabic language, with a special focus on Machine Translation (MT) and Multilingual Information Retrieval (MLIR). The internship is organised in the framework of the European project MEDAR (MEDiterranean ARabic language and speech technology). She or he will work in ELDA offices in Paris and the main work will consist of the development and adaptation of MT and MLIR open source software for Arabic.

http://www.medar.info
http://www.elda.org

Qualifications:
---------------
The applicant should have a high-quality degree in Computer Science. Good programming skills in C, C++, Perl and Eclipse are required.
The applicant should have a good knowledge of Linux and open source software.

Interest in Speech/Text Processing, Machine Learning, Computational Linguistics, or Cognitive Science is a plus.
Proficiency in written English is required.


Starting date:
--------------
February 2009.


Applications
-------------
Applications in the first instance should be made by email to
Djamel Mostefa, Head of Production and Evaluation department, ELDA,  email: mostefa _AT_ elda.org

Please include a cover letter and  your CV 

Ph.D. position

in the field of

Multimodal Dialog Systems

is to be filled immediately with a salary according to TV-L, E13.

The responsibilities include basic research in the area of multimodal dialog systems, especially multimodal human-robot interaction and learning robots, within application targeted research projects in the area of multimodal Human-machine interaction.  Set in a framework of internationally and industry funded research programs, the successful candidate(s) are expected to contribute to the state-of-the art of modern spoken dialog systems, improving natural interaction with robots.

We are an internationally renowned research group with an excellent infrastructure. Current research projects for improving Human-Machine and Human-to-Human interaction are focus on dialog management for Human-Robot interaction.

Within the framework of the International Center for Advanced Communication Technology (interACT), our institute operates in two locations, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Germany and at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.  International joint and collaborative research at and between our centers is common and encouraged, and offers great international exposure and activity. 

Applicants are expected to have:

• an excellent university degree (M.S, Diploma or Ph.D.) in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, or related fields
• excellent programming skills 
• advanced knowledge in at least one of the fields of Speech and Language Processing, Pattern Recognition, or Machine Learning

For candidates with Bachelor or Master’s degrees, the position offers the opportunity to work toward a Ph.D. degree.

In line with the university's policy of equal opportunities, applications from qualified women are particularly encouraged. Handicapped applicants will be preferred in case of the same qualification.

Questions may be directed to: Hartwig Holzapfel, Tel. 0721 608 4057, E-Mail: hartwig@ira.uka.de,  http://isl.ira.uka.de

The application should be sent to Professor Waibel, Institut für Theoretische Informatik, Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Adenauerring 4, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany

Two post-doc positions on sparse representations at IRISA, Rennes,  Post-Doc DeadLine: 28/02/2009 stephanie.lemaile@irisa.fr  Two postdoc positions are opened in the METISS team at INRIA, Rennes, France, in the area of data analysis / signal processing for large-scale data.   INRIA, the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control plays a leading role in the development of Information and Communication Science and Technology (ICST) in France.  The METISS project team gathers more than 15 researchers and engineers for research in audio signal and speech modelling and processing.  The positions are opened in the context of the European project SMALL (Sparse Models, Algorithms and Learning for Large-scale data), within the FET-Open program of FP7, and of the ECHANGE project (ECHantillonnage Acoustique Nouvelle GEnération), funded by the french ANR.  The objective of the SMALL project is to build a theoretical framework with solid foundations, as well as efficient algorithms, to discover and exploit structure in large-scale multimodal or multichannel data, using sparse signal representations. The SMALL consortium is made of 5 academic partners located in four countries (France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, and Israel). INRIA is the scientific coordinator of the SMALL project.   INRIA is also the coordinator of the ECHANGE project, which gathers three academic partners (Institut Jean Le Rond d'Alembert & Institut Jacques Louis Lions from Université Paris 6, and INRIA).  The objective of ECHANGE is to design a theoretical and experimental framework based on sparse representations and compressed sensing to measure and process large complex acoustic fields through a limited number of acoustic sensors.  DESCRIPTION The postdocs will work on theoretical, algorithmic and practical aspects of sparse representations of large-dimensional data, with a particular emphasis on acoustic fields, for various applications such as compressed sensing, source separation and localization, and signal classification.   REQUESTED PROFILE: Candidates should hold a Ph.D in Signal/Image Processing, Machine Learning, or Applied Mathematics.  Previous experience in sparse representations (time-frequency and time-scale transforms, pursuit algorithms, support vector machines and related approaches) is desirable, as well as a strong taste for the mathematical aspects of signal processing.     ADDITIONAL INFORMATION  For additional technical information, please contact :  remi.gribonval@inria.fr    DURATION OF THE CONTRACT The positions, funded for at least 2 years (up to three years), will be renewed on a yearly basis depending on scientific progress and achievement. The gross minimum salary will be 28287 € annually (~ 1923 € net per month) and will be adjusted according to experience. The usual funding support of any French institution (medical insurance, etc.) will be provided.   TENTATIVE RECRUITING DATE  01.03.2009  as soon as possible  PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT  INRIA Rennes – Bretagne Atlantique  (France) - Websites: : http://www.irisa.fr/ / http://www.inria.fr   SCIENTIFIC COORDINATOR  Rémi GRIBONVAL - SMALL/ECHANGE project leader -  METISS Project-Team - INRIA-Bretagne Atlantique -  Email: remi.gribonval@inria.fr -  phone: +33 2 99 84 25 06   APPLICATIONS TO BE SENT TO  Please send application files (a motivation letter, a full resume, a statement of research interests, a list of  publications, and up to five reference letters) to  Stéphanie Lemaile, SMALL/ECHANGE administrative assistant.  Email: stephanie.lemaile@irisa.fr  Deadline: end of february 2009.    http://gdr-isis.org/rilk/gdr/Kiosque/poste.php?jobid=3051

AT&T Labs - Research : Research Staff

AT&T Labs - Research is seeking exceptional candidates for
Research Staff positions. AT&T is the premiere broadband, IP,
entertainment, and wireless communications company in the U.S.
and one of the largest in the world. Our researchers are
dedicated to solving real problems in speech and language
processing, and are involved in inventing, creating and
deploying innovative services. We also explore fundamental
research problems in these areas. Outstanding Ph.D.-level
candidates at all levels of experience are encouraged to apply.
Candidates must demonstrate excellence in research, a
collaborative spirit and strong communication and software
skills. Areas of particular interest are

    * Large-vocabulary automatic speech recognition
    * Acoustic and language modeling
    * Robust speech recognition
    * Signal processing
    * Adaptive learning
    * Pronunciation modeling
    * Natural language understanding
    * Voice and multimodal search

AT&T Companies are Equal Opportunity Employers. All qualified
candidates will receive full and fair consideration for
employment. Application instructions are available on our
website at http://www.research.att.com. Click on "Join us". 

2009 PhD Research Fellowships 

The Adaptive Multimodal Information and  Interface  Research Lab

(casa.disi.unitn.it) at University of Trento (Italy) has several

PhD Research fellowships in the following areas:

                Statistical Machine Translation                

                Natural Language Processing    

                Automatic Speech Recognition

                Machine Learning

                Spoken/Multimodal Conversational Systems

We are looking for students with _excellent_ academic records

and relevant technical background. Students with EE, CS Master degrees

( or equivalent ) are welcome as well other related disciplines will

be considered. Prospective students are encouraged to look at the lab

website to search for current and past research projects.

PhD research fellowships benefits are described in the graduate school

website (http://ict.unitn.it/disi/edu/ict).

The  applicants should be fluent in _English_. The Italian language

competence is optional and applicants are encouraged to acquire

this skill during training. All applicants should have very good

programming skills. University of Trento is an equal opportunity employer.

The selection of candidates will be open until positions are filled.

Interested applicants should send their CV along with their

statement of research interest, transcript records and three reference

letters to :

                Prof. Dr.-Ing. Giuseppe Riccardi

        Email: riccardi@disi.unitn.it

-------------------

About University of Trento and Information Engineering and Computer

 Science Department

The University of Trento is constantly ranked as

 premiere Italian graduate university institution (see www.disi.unitn.it).

Please visit the DISI Doctorate school website at http://ict.unitn.it/edu/ict

DISI Department

DISI has a strong focus on Interdisciplinarity with professors from

different faculties of the University (Physical Science, Electrical

Engineering, Economics, Social Science, Cognitive Science, Computer Science)

 with international background.

DISI aims at exploiting the complementary experiences present in the

various research areas in order to develop innovative methods and

technologies, applications and advanced services.

English is the official language.

--

Prof. Ing. Giuseppe Riccardi

Marie Curie Excellence Leader

Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science

University of Trento

Room D11, via Sommarive 14

38050 Povo di Trento, Italy

tel  : +39-0461 882087

email: riccardi@dit.unitn.it

Call for Papers

Recent Advances in Biometric Systems: A Signal Processing Perspective

Biometrics a digital recognition technology that relies on highly distinctive physical and physiological characteristics of an individual is potentially a powerful and reliable method for personal authentication. The increasing importance of biometrics is underscored by the rapidly growing number of educational and research activities devoted to this field; and by a large number of annually organized Conferences and Symposia exclusively devoted to biometrics. Biometrics is a multidisciplinary field with researchers from signal processing, pattern recognition, computer vision, and statistics. Recently, a number of new important directions have been identified for biometric research, including processing and encoding of nonideal data, biometrics at a distance, and data quality assessment. Problems in nonideal biometric data include off-angle, occluded, blurred, and noisy images. Biometrics at a distance is concerned with recognition from video or snapshots of a biometric samples captured from a noncooperative moving individual. The goal of this special issue is to focus on recent advances in signal processing of biometric data that allow improved recognition performance through novel restoration, processing, and encoding; matching techniques capable of dealing with complexity and distortions in data acquired from a distance; recognition from biometric data acquired from unconstrained environments or complex experimental set ups; and the characterization of quality and its relationship with performance.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Biometric-based recognition under unconstrained presentation and/or complex environment using the following:
    o Face
    o Iris
    o Fingerprint
    o Voice
    o Hand
    o Soft biometrics

Multimodal biometric recognition using nonideal data

Biometric image/signal quality assessment:
    o Face
    o Iris
    o Fingerprint
    o Voice
    o Hand
    o Soft biometrics

Biometric security and privacy
    o Liveness detection
    o Encryption
    o Cancelable biometrics

The special issue will focus both on the development and comparison of novel signal/image processing approaches and on their expanding range of applications.

Authors should follow the EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing manuscript format described at the journal site http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asp/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/, according to the following timetable:

Manuscript Due                 October 1, 2008
First Round of Reviews         January 1, 2009
Publication Date               April 1, 2009

Guest Editors

o Natalia A. Schmid, Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA; natalia.schmid@mail.wvu.edu
o Stephanie Schuckers, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY 13699, USA; sschucke@clarkson.edu
o Jonathon Phillips, National Institute of Standard and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA; jonathon@nist.gov
o Kevin Bowyer, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA; kwb@cse.nd.edu 

Call for Papers

Special issue of Eurasip journal on advanced signal processing

Analysis and Signal Processing of Oesophagial and Pathological Voices

Speech is the most important means of communication among humans. Speech, however, is not limited only to the process of communication, but is also very important for transferring emotions, expressing our personality, and reflecting situations of stress. Modern lifestyles have increased the risk of experiencing some kind of voice alteration. It is estimated that around 19% of the population suffer or have suffered from dysphonic voicing. This motivates new and objective ways to evaluate speech, its quality, and its connection with other phenomena.

Speech research to date has favored areas such as synthesis, recognition, and speaker verification. The last few years have witnessed the emerging topic of processing and evaluation of disordered speech. Acoustic analysis is a noninvasive technique providing an efficient tool for the objective diagnosis, the screening of voice diseases, the objective determination of vocal function alterations, and the evaluation of surgical treatment and rehabilitation. Its application extends beyond medicine, and now includes forensic analysis as well as voice quality control for voice professionals. Acoustic analysis may also be seen as complementary to other methods of evaluation based on the direct observation of the vocal folds using videoendoscopy.

This special issue aims to foster an interdisciplinary forum for presenting new work in the analysis and modeling of voice signals and videoendoscopic images, with applications in pathological and oesophageal voices.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

o Automatic detection of voice disorders
o Automatic assessment and classification of voice quality
o New strategies for the parameterization and modeling of normal and pathological voices (biomechanical-based parameters, chaos modeling, etc.)
o Databases of vocal disorders
o Inverse filtering
o Signal processing for remote diagnosis
o Speech enhancement for pathological and oesophageal voices
o Objective parameters extraction from vocal fold images using videolaryngoscopy, videokymography, fMRI, and other emerging techniques
o Multimodal analysis of disordered speech
o Robust pitch extraction algorithms for pathological and oesophageal voices

Since speech communication is fundamental to human interaction, we are moving towards a new scenario where speech is gaining greater importance in our daily lives, and many common speech disorders and dysfunctions would be treated using computer-based or physical prosthetics.

Authors should follow the EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing manuscript format described at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asp/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following tentative timetable:

Manuscript Due                 November 1, 2008
First Round of Reviews         February 1, 2009
Publication Date               May 1, 2009

Guest Editors

o Juan I. Godino-Llorente, Department of Circuits and Systems Engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), Ctra. de Valencia, 28031 Madrid, Spain; igodino@ics.upm.es
o Pedro Gómez-Vilda, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM), Boadilla del Monte, 28660 Madrid, Spain; pedro@pino.datsi.fi.upm.es
o Tan Lee, Department of Electronic Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, New Territories, Hong Kong; tanlee@ee.cuhk.edu.hk 

Special Issue on "Emergent Artificial Intelligence Approaches for Pattern Recognition in Speech and Language Processing"

      Computer Speech and Language, Elsevier       Deadline for paper submission: September 26, 2008.  http://speechlab.ifsc.usp.br/call/csl.pdf                        =

Special Issue of IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing **SIGNAL MODELS AND REPRESENTATION OF MUSICAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL SOUNDS**  http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/sps/tap http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/sps/tap/sp_issue/audioCFP.pdf * *-- Submission deadline: 15 December, 2008 --  Notification of acceptance: 15 June, 2009 Final manuscript due: 1st July, 2009 Tentative publication date: 1st September, 2009   Guest editors Dr. Bertrand David (Telecom ParisTech, France)  bertrand.david@telecom-paristech.fr Dr. Laurent Daudet (UPMC University Paris 06, France) daudet@lam.jussieu.fr Dr. Masataka Goto (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and  Technology, Japan) m.goto@aist.go.jp Dr. Paris Smaragdis (Adobe Systems, Inc, USA) paris@adobe.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------    The non-stationary nature, the richness of the spectra and the mixing of  diverse sources are common characteristics shared by musical and  environmental audio scenes. It leads to specific challenges of audio  processing tasks such as information retrieval, source separation,  analysis-transformation-synthesis and coding. When seeking to extract  information from musical or environmental audio signals, the  time-varying waveform or spectrum are often further analysed and  decomposed into sound elements. Two aims of this decomposition can be  identified, which are sometimes antagonist: to be together adapted to  the particular properties of the signal and to the targeted application.  This special issue is focused on how the choices of a low level  representation (typically a time-frequency distribution with or without  probabilistic framework, with or without perceptual considerations), a  source model or a decomposition technique may influence the overall  performance.  Specific topics of interest include but are not limited to: * factorizations of time-frequency distribution * sparse representations * Bayesian frameworks * parametric modeling * subspace-based methods for audio signals * representations based on instrument or/and environmental sources  signal models * sinusoidal modeling of non-stationary spectra (sinusoids, noise,  transients)  Typical applications considered are (non exclusively): * source separation/recognition * mid or high level features extraction (metrics, onsets, pitches, …) * sound effects * audio coding * information retrieval * audio scene structuring, analysis or segmentation * ...  B. David, L.Daudet, P. Smaragdis, M. Goto.

 "Speech Communication" special issue on "Speech and Face to Face Communication 
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505597/description

Speech communication is increasingly studied in a face to face perspective:
- It is interactive: the speaking partners build a complex communicative act together
involving linguistic, emotional, expressive, and more generally cognitive and social
dimensions;
- It involves multimodality to a large extent: the “listener” sees and hears the speaker who
produces sounds as well as facial and more generally bodily gestures;
- It involves not only linguistic but also psychological, affective and social aspects of
interaction. Gaze together with speech contribute to maintain mutual attention and to
regulate turn-taking for example. Moreover the true challenge of speech communication is
to take into account and integrate information not only from the speaker but also from the
entire physical environment in which the interaction takes place.

The present issue proposes to synthetize the most recent developments in
this topic considering its various aspects from complementary perspectives: cognitive and
neurocognitive (multisensory and perceptuo-motor interactions), linguistic (dialogic face to
face interactions), paralinguistic (emotions and affects, turn-taking, mutual attention),
computational (animated conversational agents, multimodal interacting communication
systems).

There will be two stages in the submission procedure.

- First stage (by DECEMBER 1ST): submission of a one-to-two page abstract describing the
contents of the work and its relevance to the "Speech and Face to Face Communication" topic
by DECEMBER 1ST. The guest editors will then make a selection of the most relevant
proposals in December.

- Second stage (by MARCH 1ST): the selected contributors will be invited to submit a full
paper by MARCH 1ST. The submitted papers will then be peer reviewed through the regular
Speech Communication journal process (two independent reviews). Accepted papers will then
be published in the special issue.

Abstracts should be directly sent to the guest editors:
Marion.Dohen@gipsa-lab.inpg.fr, Gerard.Bailly@gipsa-lab.inpg.fr, Jean-Luc.Schwartz@gipsa-lab.inpg.fr

SPECIAL ISSUE ON SCALABLE AUDIO-CONTENT ANALYSIS

The amount of easily-accessible audio, whether in the form of large
collections of audio or audio-video recordings, or in the form of
streaming media, has increased exponentially in recent times.
However this audio is not standardized: much of it is noisy,
recordings are frequently not clean, and most of it is not labelled.
The audio content covers a large range of categories including
sports, music and songs, speech, and natural sounds. There is
therefore a need for algorithms that allow us make sense of these
data, to store, process, categorize, summarize, identify and
retrieve them quickly and accurately.

In this special issue we invite papers that present novel approaches
to problems such as (but not limited to):

Audio similarity
Audio categorization
Audio classification
Indexing and retrieval
Semantic tagging
Audio event detection
Summarization
Mining

We are especially interested in work that addresses real-world
issues such as:

Scalable and efficient algorithms
Audio analysis under noisy and real-world conditions
Classification with uncertain labeling
Invariance to recording conditions
On-line and real-time analysis of audio.
Algorithms for very large audio databases.

We encourage theoretical or application-oriented papers that
highlight exploitation of such techniques in practical systems/products.

Authors should follow the EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music
Processing manuscript format described at the journal site
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asmp/. Prospective authors should
submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the
journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/,
according to the following timetable:

Manuscript Due: June 1st, 2009
First Round of Reviews: September 1, 2009
Publication Date: December 1st, 2009

Guest Editors:

1) Bhiksha Raj
Associate professor

School of computer science
Carnegie Mellon university

2) Paris Smaragdis
Senior Research Scientist
Advanced Technology Labs, Adobe Systems Inc.
Newton, MA, USA

3) Malcolm Slaney
Principal Scientist
Yahoo! Research
Santa Clara, CA
and
(Consulting) Professor
Stanford CCRMA

4) Chung-Hsien Wu
Distinguished Professor
Dept. of Computer Science & Infomation Engineering
National Cheng Kung University,
Tainan, TAIWAN

5) Liming Chen
Professor and head of the Dept. Mathematics & Informatics
Ecole Centrale de Lyon
University of Lyon
Lyon, France

6) Professor Hyoung-Gook Kim
Intelligent Multimedia Signal Processing Lab.
Kwangwoon University, Republic of Korea 

Atypical Speech
Call for Papers

Research in speech processing (e.g., speech coding, speech enhancement, speech recognition, speaker recognition, etc.) tends to concentrate on speech samples collected from normal adult talkers. Focusing only on these “typical speakers” limits the practical applications of automatic speech processing significantly. For instance, a spoken dialogue system should be able to understand any user, even if he or she is under stress or belongs to the elderly population. While there is some research effort in language and gender issues, there remains a critical need for exploring issues related to “atypical speech”. We broadly define atypical speech as speech from speakers with disabilities, children's speech, speech from the elderly, speech with emotional content, speech in a musical context, and speech recorded through unique, nontraditional transducers. The focus of the issue is on voice quality issues rather than unusual talking styles.

In this call for papers, we aim to concentrate on issues related to processing of atypical speech, issues that are commonly ignored by the mainstream speech processing research. In particular, we solicit original, previously unpublished research on:
• Identification of vocal effort, stress, and emotion in speech
• Identification and classification of speech and voice disorders
• Effects of ill health on speech
• Enhancement of disordered speech
• Processing of children's speech
• Processing of speech from elderly speakers
• Song and singer identification
• Whispered, screamed, and masked speech
• Novel transduction mechanisms for speech processing
• Computer-based diagnostic and training systems for speech dysfunctions
• Practical applications

Authors should follow the EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing manuscript format described at the journal site

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/asmp/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at

http://mts.hindawi.com/, according to the following timetable:
Manuscript Due
April 1, 2009
First Round of Reviews
July 1, 2009
Publication Date
October 1, 2009

Guest Editors
•

Georg Stemmer, Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, 80333 Munich, Germany
•

Elmar Nöth, Department of Pattern Recognition, Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
•

Vijay Parsa, National Centre for Audiology, The University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada N6G 1H1 

•

Audiovisual synthesis from text

•

Facial animation from audio

•

Trajectory formation systems

•

Evaluation methods for audiovisual synthesis

•

Perception of audiovisual asynchrony in speech and music

•

Control of speech and facial expressions

One page abstractJanuary 1, 2009
Preselection of papersFebruary 1, 2009
Manuscript dueMarch 1, 2009
First round of reviewsMay 1, 2009
Camera-ready papersJuly 1, 2009
Publication dateSeptember 1,2009

Guest Editors

CALL FOR PAPERS: SPECIAL ISSUE OF SPEECH COMMUNICATION

NON-NATIVE SPEECH PERCEPTION IN ADVERSE CONDITIONS: IMPERFECT KNOWLEDGE, IMPERFECT SIGNAL

Much work in phonetics and speech perception has focused on doubly-optimal conditions, in which the signal reaching listeners is unaffected by distorting influences and in which listeners possess native competence in the sound system. However, in practice, these idealised conditions are rarely met. The processes of speech production and perception thus have to account for imperfections in the state of knowledge of the interlocutor as well as imperfections in the signal received. In noisy settings, these factors combine to create particularly adverse conditions for non-native listeners.

The purpose of the Special Issue is to assemble the latest research on perception in adverse conditions with special reference to non-native communication. The special issue will bring together, interpret and extend the results emerging from current research carried out by engineers, psychologists and phoneticians, such as the general frailty of some sounds for both native and non-native listeners and the strong non-native disadvantage experienced for categories which are apparently equivalent in the listeners’ native and target languages.

Papers describing novel research on non-native speech perception in adverse conditions are welcomed, from any perspective including the following. We especially welcome interdisciplinary contributions.

• models and theories of L2 processing in noise
• informational and energetic masking
• role of attention and processing load
• effect of noise type and reverberation
• inter-language phonetic distance
• audiovisual interactions in L2
• perception-production links
• the role of fine phonetic detail

GUEST EDITORS

Maria Luisa Garcia Lecumberri (Department of English, University of the Basque Country, Vitoria, Spain).
garcia.lecumberri@ehu.es

Martin Cooke (Ikerbasque and Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of the Basque Country, Bilbao, Spain).
m.cooke@ikerbasque.org

Anne Cutler (Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, The Netherlands and MARCS Auditory Laboratories, Sydney, Australia).
anne.cutler@mpi.nl


DEADLINE

Full papers should be submitted by 31st July 2009

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE

Authors should consult the “guide for authors”, available online at http://www.elsevier.com/locate/specom, for information about the preparation of their manuscripts. Papers should be submitted via http://ees.elsevier.com/specom, choosing “Special Issue: non-native speech perception” as the article type. If you are a first time user of the system, please register yourself as an author. Prospective authors are welcome to contact the guest editors for more details of the Special Issue. 

Call for Papers IEEE Signal Processing Society IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing  Special Issue on Speech Processing for Natural Interaction                   with Intelligent Environments  With the advances in microelectronics, communication technologies and smart materials, our environments are transformed to be increasingly intelligent by the presence of robots, bio-implants, mobile devices, advanced in-car systems, smart house appliances and other professional systems. As these environments are integral parts of our daily work and life, there is a great interest in a natural interaction with them. Also, such interaction may further enhance the perception of intelligence. "Interaction between man and machine should be based on the very same concepts as that between humans, i.e. it should be intuitive, multi-modal and based on emotion," as envisioned by Reeves and Nass (1996) in their famous book "The Media Equation". Speech is the most natural means of interaction for human beings and it offers the unique advantage that it does not require carrying a device for using it since we have our "device" with us all the time.  Speech processing techniques are developed for intelligent environments to support either explicit interaction through message communications, or implicit interaction by providing valuable information about the physical ("who speaks when and where") as well as the emotional and social context of an interaction. Challenges presented by intelligent environments include the use of distant microphone(s), resource constraints and large variations in acoustic condition, speaker, content and context. The two central pieces of techniques to cope with them are high-performing "low-level" signal processing algorithms and sophisticated "high-level" pattern recognition methods.  We are soliciting original, previously unpublished manuscripts directly targeting/related to natural interaction with intelligent environments. The scope of this special issue includes, but is not limited to:  * Multi-microphone front-end processing for distant-talking interaction * Speech recognition in adverse acoustic environments and joint          optimization with array processing * Speech recognition for low-resource and/or distributed computing          infrastructure * Speaker recognition and affective computing for interaction with          intelligent environments * Context-awareness of speech systems with regard to their applied          environments * Cross-modal analysis of speech, gesture and facial expressions for          robots and smart spaces * Applications of speech processing in intelligent systems, such as          robots, bio-implants and advanced driver assistance systems.  Submission information is available at http://www.ece.byu.edu/jstsp. Prospective authors are required to follow the Author's Guide for manuscript preparation of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing at http://ewh.ieee.org/soc/sps/tsp. Manuscripts will be peer reviewed according to the standard IEEE process.  Manuscript submission due:    		 		  		 		  Jul. 3, 2009 First review completed:       		 		  		 		  Oct. 2, 2009 Revised manuscript due:      		 		  		 		  Nov. 13, 2009 Second review completed:      		 		  		 		  Jan. 29, 2010 Final manuscript due:         		 		  		 		  Mar. 5, 2010  Lead guest editor:         Zheng-Hua Tan, Aalborg University, Denmark             zt@es.aau.dk  Guest editors:         Reinhold Haeb-Umbach, University of Paderborn, Germany             haeb@nt.uni-paderborn.de         Sadaoki Furui, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan             furui@cs.titech.ac.jp         James R. Glass, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA             glass@mit.edu         Maurizio Omologo, FBK-IRST, Italy             omologo@fbk.eu

 Jeudi 12 février 2009, 13h30 – Séminaire externe
========================================
Thierry NAZZI
Laboratoire Psychologie de la Perception
Paris

Différences dans les trajectoires d'émergence des capacités de segmentation de la parole dans deux dialectes du français

Dans l'étude de Nazzi et al. (2006), nous avons établi que les enfants français commençaient à segmenter de la parole des unités syllabiques, entre 8 et 12 mois, avant de segmenter des mots bisyllabiques entre 12 et 16 mois. Les données sur les mots bisyllabiques sont surprenantes étant donné les données (1) sur l'anglais montrant des capacités de segmentation trochaique à 7.5 mois et iambiques à 10.5 mois et (2) sur le français québécois montrant des capacités de segmentation bisyllabiques à 8 mois. Nous présenterons les résultats de nouvelles études sur cette question qui feront apparaître d'une part des différences dans le pattern d'émergence des capacités de segmentation entre deux dialectes du français (parisien versus québécois), et d'autre part des interactions entre la langue/le dialecte acquis par un enfant et les procédures expérimentales utilisées.

Salle de réunion du Département Parole et Cognition (B314)
3ème étage Bâtiment B ENSE3
961 rue de la Houille Blanche
Domaine Universitaire

Jeudi 26 février 2009, 13h30 – Séminaire externe
========================================
Yves LAPRIE
LORIA, Nancy

Le projet ASPI : audiovisual-to-articulatory speech inversion

The objective of the ASPI project is to perform audiovisual-to-articulatory inversion. In order to achieve this goal this requires:

- The acquisition of articulatory data which enable the evaluation of inversion techniques and the elaboration of analyzing articulatory models. We will describe the system designed within the framework of ASPI. This system merges ultrasound images (tongue), stereo images (face), electromagnetic sensors (tongue apex), and the speech signal. The main achievement is the geometrical merging which requires the calibration and the synchronization of the different modalities. Another important facet is the use of existing X-ray data and the acquisition of MRI images which offer a complete view of the vocal tract.

- The development of inversion algorithms. Our work relies on an analysis by synthesis method which exploits the Maeda’s articulatory synthesizer. The principle is to explore the articulatory space efficiently to find at each time point all the inverse solutions, and then to reconstruct optimal articulatory trajectories from these local solutions. We will describe our framework for inversion, additional phonetic constraints to penalize unrealistic vocal tract shapes, and improvements enabling faster and better inversion. Finally, we will present the exploitation of articulatory data to evaluate inversion.

Salle de réunion du Département Parole et Cognition (B314)
3ème étage Bâtiment B ENSE3
961 rue de la Houille Blanche
Domaine Universitaire

Jeudi 5 mars 2009, 13h30 – Séminaire externe
========================================
Serge PINTO
Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-en-Provence

Titre à préciser

Résumé à venir

Salle de réunion du Département Parole et Cognition (B314)
3ème étage Bâtiment B ENSE3
961 rue de la Houille Blanche
Domaine Universitaire

Early discounted registration for the Voice Search Conference

International Workshop on Pharyngeals & Pharyngealisation
 
Co-organised by the Centre for Research in Linguistics and Language  Science (CRiLLS), Newcastle University and Praxiling Centre National de la  Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Université Montpellier III
 
Date: 26 - 27 March 2009  
 
Venue: Research Beehive, Newcastle University 
 
**Final programme now available, please click here. ** 
 
Background on Pharyngeals and Pharyngealisation
 
Over the last 50 years, the study of pharyngeal and pharyngealised sounds has  fascinated many a linguist due to their varied phonological representations,  their complex articulation and co-articulation patterns, their late development  in the process of language acquisition, and their sociolinguistic and  crosslinguistic patterning. Approaches to the study of pharyngeal and  pharyngealised sounds have included: a) phonological work looking at identifying  consistent and uniform characteristics for this class of sounds b) experimental  work looking at auditory, acoustic, and articulatory manifestations of  pharyngeal constrictions c) acquisition studies looking at pharyngeals in  babies’ early vocalisations regardless of language and later development in  languages which contain these sounds d) socioliguistic work identifying  cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal differences in the realisation of these  sounds as well as the influence of social factors such gender, ethnicity, and  social class. For more information please click here.
 
Aims of the Workshop
 
The purpose of this workshop is to bring together researchers from around the  world who have worked on pharyngeal and pharyngealised sounds in the different  areas mentioned above in order to share expertise in different methodologies and  theoretical approaches to the study of these sounds and attempt to answer  various outstanding questions regarding:
 
 
Language universals: why are pharyngeal sounds present in only 1% of  languages surveyed in the UPSID data base when they are present in children’s  early vocalisations? How have these sounds evolved in languages that have lost  the pharyngeal distinctions? Is there a relationship between a dense consonantal  system and the existence of pharyngeal/pharyngealised sounds in a language?
Production and perception: what are the acoustic, articulatory, and  perceptual correlates of pharyngeal and pharyngealised sounds? What role do  visual cues (e.g. lip rounding) play in processing pharyngeal articulations?
The sociolinguistic indices of pharyngeal/pharyngealised articulations: How  does pharyngealisation manifest itself in different languages/dialects? Is the  gender-correlated patterning that has been documented in urban areas in the Arab  world with respect to de-emphasis found in other varieties/languages with  pharyngeal/pharyngealised articulations? How are pharyngeal articulations  affected in language contact situations?
Acquisition: at what age are pharyngeal and pharyngealised sounds acquired  and what are the developmental manifestations across languages and/or  dialects?  
 
Invited Speakers
 
 
Dr John Esling, University of Victoria (Canada)
Dr Zeki Majeed Hassan, Al-Zaytoonah University (Jordan)
Dr Barry Heselwood, University of Leeds (UK)
Prof Asher Laufer, The Hebrew University (Israel
Prof Ian Maddieson, University of New Mexico (USA)
Dr Slim Ouni, CNRS-Université de Nancy I (France)
Dr Yves Laprie, CNRS-Université de Nancy I (France)
Dr Rachid Ridouane, LPP CNRS-Université Paris III (France)
Dr Kimary Shahin, Qatar University (Qatar)
Prof Jim Scobbie, Queen Margaret University (UK)
Prof Janet Watson, University of Salford (UK)
Dr Chakir Zeroual, Faculté Polydisciplinaire de Taza  (Morocco)
 
Scientific Committee
 
 
Jalal Al-Tamimi (Newcastle University)
Enam Al Wer (Essex University)
Thomas Baer (University of Cambridge)
Jean-Francois Bonnot (Université de Besançon)
Nick Clements (LPP CNRS-Université Paris III)
Stuart Davis (Indiana University)
Susanne Fuchs (Berlin University)
John McCarthy (UMASS)
Mohamed Embarki (Université Montpellier III)
Kenneth de Jong (Indiana University)
Ghada Khattab (Newcastle University)
Amanda Miller (University of British Columbia)
Daniel Recasens (University Autònoma of Barcelona)
Harvey Sussman (University of Texas)
Nathalie Vallée (Université Stendhal, Grenoble)  
 
Organisation of the Workshop
 
The programme consists of 11 invited oral presentations and a  poster session.  
 
Workshop Themes 
 
We welcome work on pharyngeals and pharyngealisation in any of the following  fields:
 
 
Universals
Phonology
Production and perception
Modelling
Acquisition
Sociolinguistic variation      
 
Registration
Places are available for participants who are not  presenting papers but who will participate in discussions. To register please  click on the following link:  
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/niassh/Pharyngealisation/questionnaire.htm
 
 
Early deadline (£80 for staff and £40 for students):  February 22, 2009
Late registration (£100 for staff and £50 for students):  February 23 -  March 25
Registration on the day: £120 for staff and £60 for students
  
Accommodation
 
Accommodation ranging from Youth Hostels (£20 per person per night) to 4  stars (£100 per person per night) is available to participants from the 25th to  the 31st of March and can be booked directly by clicking on the following  website:
http://www.NewcastleGateshead.com/NGIPHARYNGEALS 
Please note that accommodation booking is managed by the hotels/hostels in  collaboration with the NewcastleGateshead Convention Bureau so any queries about  acommodation should be directed to them instead of the conference  organisers.
 
Travel
 
For more information on travelling to and around Newcastle please visit link  to www.ncl.ac.uk/travel/info  where you can also download maps of the city centre and campus.
 
Organization Committee
 
Jalal Al-Tamimi, CRiLLS, Newcastle University (UK). Jalal.Al-Tamimi@ncl.ac.uk
 
Mohamed Embarki, Praxiling UMR 5267 CNRS-Montpellier III (France). mohamed.embarki@univ-montp3.fr
 
Ghada Khattab, CRiLLS, Newcastle University (UK). Ghada.Khattab@ncl.ac.uk
 
Hussain Kriba, CRiLLS, Newcastle University (UK). Hussin.Kriba@ncl.ac.uk
 
 
 
 
 
 

Call for Papers  3rd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND AUTOMATA THEORY AND APPLICATIONS (LATA 2009)  Tarragona, Spain, April 2-8, 2009  http://grammars.grlmc.com/LATA2009/  *********************************************************************  AIMS:  LATA is a yearly conference in theoretical computer science and its applications. As linked to the International PhD School in Formal Languages and Applications that was developed at the host institute in the period 2002-2006, LATA 2009 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It will aim at attracting contributions from both classical theory fields and application areas (bioinformatics, systems biology, language technology, artificial intelligence, etc.).  SCOPE:  Topics of either theoretical or applied interest include, but are not limited to:  - algebraic language theory - algorithms on automata and words - automata and logic - automata for system analysis and programme verification - automata, concurrency and Petri nets - biomolecular nanotechnology - cellular automata - circuits and networks - combinatorics on words - computability - computational, descriptional, communication and parameterized complexity - data and image compression - decidability questions on words and languages - digital libraries - DNA and other models of bio-inspired computing - document engineering - extended automata - foundations of finite state technology - fuzzy and rough languages - grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, multidimensional, unification, categorial, etc.) - grammars and automata architectures - grammatical inference and algorithmic learning - graphs and graph transformation - language varieties and semigroups - language-based cryptography - language-theoretic foundations of natural language processing, artificial intelligence and artificial life - mathematical evolutionary genomics - parsing - patterns and codes - power series - quantum, chemical and optical computing - regulated rewriting - string and combinatorial issues in computational biology and bioinformatics - symbolic dynamics - symbolic neural networks - term rewriting - text algorithms - text retrieval, pattern matching and pattern recognition - transducers - trees, tree languages and tree machines - weighted machines  STRUCTURE:  LATA 2009 will consist of:  - 3 invited talks (to be announced in the second call for papers) - 2 invited tutorials (to be announced in the second call for papers) - refereed contributions - open sessions for discussion in specific subfields or on professional issues (if requested by the participants)  PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:  Parosh Abdulla (Uppsala) Stefania Bandini (Milano) Stephen Bloom (Hoboken) John Brzozowski (Waterloo) Maxime Crochemore (London) Juergen Dassow (Magdeburg) Michael Domaratzki (Winnipeg) Henning Fernau (Trier) Rusins Freivalds (Riga) Vesa Halava (Turku) Juraj Hromkovic (Zurich) Lucian Ilie (London, Canada) Kazuo Iwama (Kyoto) Aravind Joshi (Philadelphia) Juhani Karhumaki (Turku) Jarkko Kari (Turku) Claude Kirchner (Bordeaux) Maciej Koutny (Newcastle) Kamala Krithivasan (Chennai) Martin Kutrib (Giessen) Andrzej Lingas (Lund) Aldo de Luca (Napoli) Rupak Majumdar (Los Angeles) Carlos Martin-Vide (Tarragona & Brussels, chair) Joachim Niehren (Villeneuve d'Ascq) Antonio Restivo (Palermo) Joerg Rothe (Duesseldorf) Wojciech Rytter (Warsaw) Philippe Schnoebelen (Cachan) Thomas Schwentick (Dortmund) Helmut Seidl (Muenchen) Alan Selman (Buffalo) Jeffrey Shallit (Waterloo) Frank Stephan (Singapore)  ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:  Madalina Barbaiani Gemma Bel-Enguix Cristina Bibire Adrian-Horia Dediu Szilard-Zsolt Fazekas Alexander Krassovitskiy Guangwu Liu Carlos Martin-Vide (chair) Robert Mercas Catalin-Ionut Tirnauca Bianca Truthe Sherzod Turaev Florentina-Lilica Voicu  SUBMISSIONS:  Authors are invited to submit papers presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages and should be formatted according to the standard format for Springer Verlag's LNCS series (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs/lncs+authors?SGWID=0-40209-0-0-0). Submissions have to be uploaded at:  http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lata2009  PUBLICATION:  A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS series will be available by the time of the conference. A refereed volume of extended versions of selected papers will be published after it as a special issue of a major journal. (This was Information and Computation for LATA 2007 and LATA 2008.)  REGISTRATION:  The period for registration will be open since September 1, 2008 to April 2, 2009. The registration form can be found at the website of the conference: http://grammars.grlmc.com/LATA2009/  Early registration fees: 450 euros Early registration fees (PhD students): 225 euros Registration fees: 540 euros Registration fees (PhD students): 270 euros  At least one author per paper should register. Papers that do not have a registered author by December 31, 2008 will be excluded from the proceedings.  Fees comprise free access to all sessions, one copy of the proceedings volume, and coffee breaks. For the participation in the full-day excursion and conference lunch on Sunday April 5, the amount of 70 euros is to be added to the fees above: accompanying persons are welcome at the same rate.  PAYMENT:  Early registration fees must be paid by bank transfer before December 31, 2008 to the conference account at Open Bank (Plaza Manuel Gomez Moreno 2, 28020 Madrid, Spain): IBAN: ES1300730100510403506598 - Swift code: OPENESMMXXX (account holder: LATA 2009 – Carlos Martin-Vide).  (Non-early) registration fees can be paid either by bank transfer to the same account or in cash on site.  Besides paying the registration fees, it is required to fill in the registration form at the website of the conference. A receipt for the payment will be provided on site.  FUNDING:  Up to 20 grants covering partial-board accommodation will be available for nonlocal PhD students. To apply, candidates must e-mail their CV together with a copy of the document proving their present status as a PhD student.  IMPORTANT DATES:  Paper submission: October 22, 2008 Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: December 10, 2008 Application for funding (PhD students): December 15, 2008 Notification of funding acceptance or rejection: December 19, 2008 Final version of the paper for the proceedings: December 24, 2008 Early registration: December 31, 2008 Starting of the conference: April 2, 2009 Submission to the journal special issue: June 22, 2009  FURTHER INFORMATION:  carlos.martin@urv.cat  ADDRESS:  LATA 2009 Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics Rovira i Virgili University Plaza Imperial Tarraco, 1 43005 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34-977-559543 Fax: +34-977-559597

IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing

http://icassp09.com

Sponsored by IEEE Signal Processing Society

April 19 - 24, 2009

Taipei International Convention Center

Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.

The 34th International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP) will be held at the Taipei International Convention Center in Taipei, Taiwan, April 19 - 24, 2009. The ICASSP meeting is the world’s largest and most comprehensive technical conference focused on signal processing and its applications. The conference will feature world-class speakers, tutorials, exhibits, and over 50 lecture and poster sessions on:

Audio and electroacoustics

Bio imaging and signal processing

Design and implementation of signal processing systems

Image and multidimensional signal processing

Industry technology tracks

Information forensics and security

Machine learning for signal processing

Multimedia signal processing

Sensor array and multichannel systems

Signal processing education

Signal processing for communications

Signal processing theory and methods

Speech and language processing

Taiwan: The Ideal Travel Destination. Taiwan, also referred to as Formosa – the Portuguese word for "graceful" – is situated on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean off the southeastern coast of mainland Asia, across the Taiwan Strait from Mainland China. To the north lie Okinawa and the main islands of Japan, and to the south is the Philippines. ICASSP 2009 will be held in Taipei, a city that blends traditional culture and cosmopolitan life. As the political, economic, educational, and recreational center of Taiwan, Taipei offers a dazzling array of cultural sights not seen elsewhere, including exquisite food from every corner of China and the world. You and your entire family will be able to fully experience and enjoy this unique city and island. Prepare yourself for the trip of your dreams, as Taiwan has it all: fantastic food, a beautiful ocean, stupendous mountains and lots of sunshine!

Submission of Papers: Prospective authors are invited to submit full-length, four-page papers, including figures and references, to the ICASSP Technical Committee. All ICASSP papers will be handled and reviewed electronically. The ICASSP 2009 website www.icassp09.com will provide you with further details. Please note that the submission dates for papers are strict deadlines.

Tutorial and Special Session Proposals: Tutorials will be held on April 19 and 20, 2009. Brief proposals should be submitted by August 4, 2008, to Tsuhan Chen at tutorials@icassp09.com and must include title, outline, contact information, biography and selected publications for the presenter, a description of the tutorial, and material to be distributed to participants. Special sessions proposals should be submitted by August 4, 2008, to Shih-Fu Chang at specialsessions@icassp09.com and must include a topical title, rationale, session outline, contact information, and a list of invited speakers. Tutorial and special session authors are referred to the ICASSP website for additional information regarding submissions.

General Chair

Lin-shan, Lee

National Taiwan University

General Vice-Chair

Iee-Ray Wei

Chunghwa Telecom Co.,Ltd.

Secretaries General

Tsungnan Lin

National Taiwan University

Fu-Hao Hsing

Chunghwa Telecom Co.,Ltd

Technical Program Chairs

Liang-Gee Chen

National Taiwan University

James R. Glass

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Technical Program Members

Petar Djuric

Stony Brook University

Joern Ostermann

Leibniz University Hannover

Yoshinori Sagisaka

Waseda University

Plenary Sessions

Soo-Chang Pei (Chair)

National Taiwan University

Hermann Ney (Co-chair)

RWTH Aachen

Special Sessions

Shih-Fu Chang (Chair)

Columbia University

Lee Swindlehurst (Co-chair)

University of California, Irvine

Tutorial Chair

Tsuhan Chen

Carnegie Mellon University

Publications Chair

Homer Chen

National Taiwan University

Publicity Chair

Chin-Teng Lin

National Chiao Tung University

Finance Chair

Hsuan-Jung Su

National Taiwan University

Local Arrangements Chairs

Tzu-Han Huang

Chunghwa Telecom Co.,Ltd.

Chong-Yung Chi

National Tsing Hwa University

Jen-Tzung Chien

National Cheng Kung University

Conference Management

Conference Management Services

3^rd Advanced Voice Function Assessment International Workshop (AVFA2009)

Madrid (Spain), 18^th - 20^th May 2009

http://www.avfa09.upm.es

     This is the first Call for Papers and Posters for the 3rd Advanced Voice Function Assessment International Workshop (AVFA2009) that will be held from May 18^th to 20^th at the Universidad Politécncia de Madrid, Spain.

Motivation

    Speech is the most important means of communication among humans, resulting from a complex interaction among vocal folds vibration at the larynx and voluntary movements of the articulators (i.e., mouth, tongue, velum, jaw, etc.). The function of voice, however, is not limited to speech communication. It also transfers emotions, expresses personality features and reflects situations of stress or pathology. Moreover, it has an aesthetic value in many different professional activities, affecting salesmen, managers, lawyers, singers, actors, etc.

     Although research in speech science has traditionally favoured areas such as synthesis, recognition or speaker verification, the previous facts motivate the current emerging of a new research area related to voice function assessment.

     AVFA2009 aims at fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and interactions among researchers in voice assessment beyond the framework of COST Action 2103, thus reaching the whole scientific community.

Topics

     Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 

• Automatic detection of voice disorders
• Automatic assessment & rating of voice quality
• New strategies for parameterization and modelling normal and pathological voices (biomechanical-based parameters, chaos modelling, etc.)
• Databases of vocal disorders
• Inverse filtering
• Signal processing for remote diagnosis
• Speech enhancement for pathological & oesophageal voices
• Objective parameters extraction from vocal fold images using videolaryngoscopy, videokymography, fMRI and other emerging techniques
• Multi-modal analysis of disordered speech
• Robust pitch extraction algorithms for pathological & oesophageal voices
• Emotions in speech
• Speaker adaptation
• Voice Physiology and Biomechanics
• Modelling of Voice Production
• Diagnosis and Evaluation Protocols
• Substitution Voices
• Evaluation of Clinical Treatments
• Analysis of Oesophageal Voices

Submission

    Prospective authors are asked to electronically submit preliminary version of full papers with a maximum length of 4 pages, including figures and tables, in English. Preliminary papers should be submitted as pdf documents, fitted to the linked  template, by the 15^th of January. The submitted documents should include the title and authors' names, affiliations and addresses. In addition, the e-mail address and phone number of the corresponding author should be given. 

    Workshop proceedings will be edited both in paper and CD-ROM. Author registration to the conference is required for accepted papers to be included in the proceedings. The best papers presented at the workshop will be eligible for publication in a referred journal.

Best student paper award

Based on the comments given by the reviewers and the presentation at the conference, the organizing committee will give a best student paper award. The awarded author will be nominated at the closing ceremony of AVFA2009.

Schedule

·        Proposal due 15th January 2009

·        Notification of acceptance 15th February 2009

·        Final papers due 28th February 2009

·        Preliminary program 1st May 2009

·        Workshop 18th May – 20th May 2009

Registration and Information

Registration will be handled via the AVFA2009 web site (http://www.avfa09.upm.es). Please contact the secretariat (avfa09@ics.upm.es) for further information.

Program Committee

• Juan Ignacio Godino Llorente, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Co-Chair
• Pedro Gómez Vilda, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Co-Chair
• Rubén Fraile, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Scientific Secretariat
• Bartolomé Scola Yurrita, Gregorio Marañón Hospital 

·         Phillippe H. Dejonckere, University Medical Center Utrecht

·         Yannis Stylianou, University of Crete

NAACL-HLT-09: Call for Tutorial Proposals

Proposals for tutorials on all topics of computational linguistics and speech processing, such as processing for purposes of indexing and retrieval, processing for data mining, and so forth, are welcome. Especially encouraged are tutorials that educate the community about advancements in speech and natural language processing occurring in situ with contextual awareness, such as understanding speech, language or gesture in particular physical contexts.

Information on the tutorial instructor payment policy can be found at http://aclweb.org/aclwiki/index.php?title= Tutorial_teacher_payment_policy

PLEASE NOTE: Remuneration for Tutorial presenters is fixed according to the above policy and does not cover registration fees for the main conference.

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Proposals for tutorials should contain:

1. A title and brief description of the tutorial content and its relevance to the NAACL-HLT community (not more than 2 pages).
2. A brief outline of the tutorial structure showing that the tutorial's core content can be covered in a three-hour slot (including a coffee break). In exceptional cases six-hour tutorial slots are available as well.
3. The names, postal addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of the tutorial instructors, including a one-paragraph statement of their research interests and areas of expertise.
4. A list of previous venues and approximate audience sizes, if the same or a similar tutorial has been given elsewhere; otherwise an estimate of the audience size.
5. A description of special requirements for technical equipment (e.g., internet access).

Proposals should be submitted by electronic mail, in plain ASCII text no later than January 15, 2009 to tutorials.hlt09 "at" gmail "dot" com. The subject line should be: "NAACL HLT 2009: TUTORIAL PROPOSAL".

PLEASE NOTE:

1. Proposals will not be accepted by regular mail or fax, only by email to: tutorials.hlt09 "at" gmail "dot" com.
2. You will receive an email confirmation from us that your proposal has been received. If you do not receive this confirmation 24 hours after sending the proposal, please contact us personally using all the following emails: ciprianchelba "at" google "dot" com,
   kantor "at" scils "dot" rutgers "dot" edu, and
   roark "at" cslu "dot" ogi "dot" edu.

TUTORIAL SPEAKER RESPONSIBILITIES

Accepted tutorial speakers will be notified by February 1, 2009, and must then provide abstracts of their tutorials for inclusion in the conference registration material by March 1, 2009. The description should be in two formats: an ASCII version that can be included in email announcements and published on the conference web site, and a PDF version for inclusion in the electronic proceedings (detailed instructions will be given). Tutorial speakers must provide tutorial materials, at least containing copies of the course slides as well as a bibliography for the material covered in the tutorial, by April 15, 2009.

IMPORTANT DATES

• Submission deadline for tutorial proposals: January 15, 2009
• Notification of acceptance: February 1, 2009
• Tutorial descriptions due: March 1, 2009
• Tutorial course material due: April 15, 2009
• Tutorial date: May 31, 2009

TUTORIALS CO-CHAIRS

• Ciprian Chelba, Google
• Paul Kantor, Rutgers
• Brian Roark, Oregon Health & Science University

   

Please send inquiries concerning NAACL-HLT-09 tutorials to tutorials.hlt09 "at" gmail "dot" com  

CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS EACL 2009, NAACL HLT 2009, AND ACL-IJCNLP 2009

Joint site:  http://www.eacl2009.gr/conference/callforworkshops

The Association for Computational Linguistics invites proposals for
workshops to be held in conjunction with one of the three flagship
conferences sponsored in 2009 by the Association for Computational
Linguistics: ACL-IJCNLP 2009, EACL 2009, and NAACL HLT 2009.  We solicit
proposals on any topic of interest to the ACL community. Workshops will
be held at one of the following conference venues:

EACL 2009 is the annual meeting of the European chapter of the ACL. The
conference will be held in Athens, Greece, March 30-April 3 2009;
workshops March 30-31.

NAACL HLT 2009 is the annual meeting of the North American chapter of
the ACL.  It continues the inclusive tradition of encompassing relevant
work from the natural language processing, speech and information
retrieval communities.  The conference will be held in Boulder,
Colorado, USA, from May 31-June 5 2009; workshops will be held June 4-5.

ACL-IJCNLP 2009 combines the 47th Annual Meeting of the Association for
Computational Linguistics (ACL 2009) with the 4th International Joint
Conference on Natural Language Processing (IJCNLP).  The conference will
be held in Singapore, August 2-7 2009; workshops will be held August 6-7.


    SUBMISSION INFORMATION

In a departure from previous years, ACL-IJCNLP, EACL and NAACL HLT will
coordinate the submission and reviewing of workshop proposals for all
three ACL 2009 conferences.

Proposals for workshops should contain:

    * A title and brief (2-page max) description of the workshop topic
      and content.
    * The desired workshop length (one or two days), and an estimate
      of the audience size.
    * The names, postal addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses
      of the organizers, with one-paragraph statements of their
      research interests and areas of expertise.
    * A budget.
    * A list of potential members of the program committee, with an
      indication of which members have already agreed.
    * A description of any shared tasks associated with the workshop.
    * A description of special requirements for technical needs.
    * A venue preference specification.

The venue preference specification should list the venues at which the
organizers would be willing to present the workshop (EACL, NAACL HLT, or
ACL-IJCNLP).  A proposal may specify one, two, or three acceptable
workshop venues; if more than one venue is acceptable, the venues should
be preference-ordered.  There will be a single workshop committee,
coordinated by the three sets of workshop chairs.  This single committee
will review the quality of the workshop proposals.  Once the reviews are
complete, the workshop chairs will work together to assign workshops to
each of the three conferences, taking into account the location
preferences given by the proposers.

The ACL has a set of policies on workshops. You can find general
information on policies regarding attendance, publication, financing,
and sponsorship, as well as on financial support of SIG workshops, at
the following URL:
http://www.cis.udel.edu/~carberry/ACL/index-policies.html

Please submit proposals by electronic mail no later than September 1
2008, to acl09-workshops at acl09-workshops@uni-konstanz.de with the
subject line: "ACL 2009 WORKSHOP PROPOSAL."


    PRACTICAL ARRANGEMENTS

Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals will occur no later
than September 23, 2008.  Since the three ACL conferences will occur at
different times, the timescales for the submission and reviewing of
workshop papers, and the preparation of camera-ready copies, will be
different for the three conferences. Suggested timescales for each of
the conferences are given below.

ALL CONFERENCES
Sep 1, 2008     Workshop proposal deadline
Sep 23, 2008    Notification of acceptance of workshops

EACL 2009
Sep 30, 2008    Call for papers issued by this date
Dec 12, 2008    Deadline for paper submission
Jan 23, 2009    Notification of acceptance of papers
Feb  6, 2009    Camera-ready copies due
Mar 30-31, 2009 EACL 2009 workshops

NAACL HLT 2009
Dec 10, 2008    Call for papers issued by this date
Mar 6, 2009     Deadline for paper submissions
Mar 30, 2009    Notification of paper acceptances
Apr 12, 2009    Camera-ready copies due
June 4-5, 2009  NAACL HLT 2009 workshops

ACL-IJCNLP 2009
Feb 6, 2009     Call for papers issued issued by this date
May 1, 2009     Deadline for paper submissions
Jun 1, 2009     Notification of acceptances
Jun 14, 2009    Camera-ready copies due
Aug 6-7, 2009   ACL-IJCNLP 2009 Workshops

Workshop Co-Chairs:

    * Miriam Butt, EACL, University of Konstanz
    * Stephen Clark, EACL, Oxford University
    * Nizar Habash, NAACL HLT, Columbia University
    * Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, NAACL HLT, University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
    * Jimmy Lin, ACL-IJCNLP, University of Maryland
    * Yuji Matumoto, ACL-IJCNLP, Nara Institute of Science and Technology

For inquiries, send email to: acl09-workshops at
acl09-workshops@uni-konstanz.de. 

NAACL HLT 09 Call for Demonstrations

The NAACL HLT 2009 Program Committee invites proposals for the Demonstration Program to be held June 1-3, 2009 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. We encourage both the exhibition of early research prototypes and interesting mature systems. Commercial sales and marketing activities are not appropriate in the Demonstration Program, and should be arranged as part of the Exhibit Program. We invite proposals for two types of demonstrations:

·        Type I: theater-style, as part of the regular program

·        Type II: poster-style, where demos are to be presented on table-tops in sessions scheduled for a specific time slot.

Submission of a demonstration proposal on a particular topic does not preclude or require a separate submission of a paper on that topic; it is possible that some but not all of the demonstrations will illustrate concepts that are described in companion papers.

Areas of Interest

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following types of systems, some of which have been demonstrated at recent ACL conferences:

·        End-to-end natural language processing systems

·        User interfaces for monolingual and multilingual information access systems, including retrieval, summarization, and QA engines

·        Voice search interfaces

·        Dialogue and conversational systems

·        Multimodal systems utilizing language technology

·        Language technology on mobile devices

·        Applications using embedded language technology components

·        Meeting capture and analysis systems utilizing language technology

·        Natural language processing systems for medical informatics

·        Assistive applications of language technology

·        Visualization tools

·        Software for evaluating natural language systems and components

·        Aids for teaching computational linguistics concepts

·        Software tools for facilitating computational linguistics research Reusable components (parsers, generators, speech recognizers, etc.)

·        Tools that assist in the development of other NLP applications (e.g., error analysis)

Format for Submission

Demo proposals consist of the following parts, which should all be sent to the Demonstration Co-Chairs. Please use the main ACL paper formatting guidelines. Please note that no hardware or software will be provided by the local organizer.

·        An extended abstract of the technical content to be demonstrated, including title, authors, full contact information, references, and acknowledgements. Please indicate a Type I or Type II demo.

·        A "script outline" of the demo presentation, including accompanying narrative, and either a Web address for accessing the demo or visual aids (e.g., screenshots, snapshots, or diagrams).

The entire proposal must not be more than four pages.

Submissions Procedure

Proposals must be submitted by February 9, 2009 to the Demonstration Co-Chairs. Submissions must be received electronically. Please submit your proposals and any inquiries to:

Michael Johnston                                         Fred Popowich         

AT&T                                                                      Simon Fraser University

johnston “at” research “dot” att “dot” com   popowich “at” sfu “dot” ca

Submissions will be evaluated on the basis of their relevance to computational linguistics, innovation, scientific contribution, presentation, as well as potential logistical constraints.

Accepted submissions will be allocated four pages in the Companion Volume to the Proceedings of the Conference.

Further Details

Further details on the date, time, and format of the demonstration session(s) will be determined and provided at a later date. Please send any inquiries to the demonstration co-chairs at the email addresses listed above.

Important Dates

All submissions or camera-ready copies are due by 11:59pm EST on the dates specified above.

Second Call For Papers  NAACL Workshop on Computational Approaches to Linguistic Creativity (CALC 2009)  Boulder, Colorado June 4, 2009  http://aclweb.org/aclwiki/index.php?title=CALC-09   It is generally agreed upon that "linguistic creativity" is a unique property of human language. Some claim that linguistic creativity is expressed in our ability to combine known words in a new sentence, others refer to our skill to express thoughts in figurative language, and yet others talk about syntactic recursion and lexical creativity.  For the purpose of this workshop, we treat the term "linguistic creativity" to mean "creative language usage at different levels", from the lexicon to syntax to discourse and text (see also topics, below).  The recognition of instances of linguistic creativity and the computation of their meaning constitute one of the most challenging problems for a variety of Natural Language Processing tasks, such as machine translation, text summarization, information retrieval, question answering, and sentiment analysis. Computational systems incorporating models of linguistic creativity operate on different types of data (including written text, audio/speech/sound, and video/images/gestures). New approaches might combine information from different modalities. Creativity-aware systems will improve the contribution Computational Linguistics has to offer to many practical areas, including education, entertainment, and engineering.  Within the scope of the workshop, the event is intended to be interdisciplinary. Besides contributions from an NLP perspective, we also welcome the participation of researchers who deal with linguistic creativity from different perspectives, including psychology, neuroscience, or human-computer interaction.  Topics ======  We are particularly interested in work on the automatic detection, classification, understanding, or generation of:  * neologisms; * figurative language, including metaphor, metonymy, personification, idioms; * new or unconventional syntactic constructions ("May I serve who's next?") and constructions defying traditional parsers (e.g. gapping: "Many words were spoken, and sentiments expressed"); * indirect speech acts (such as curses, insults, sarcasm and irony); * verbally expressed humor; * poetry and fiction; * and other phenomena illustrating linguistic creativity.  Depending on the state of the art of approaches to the various phenomena and languages, preference will be given to work on deeper processing (e.g., understanding, goal-driven generation) rather than shallow approaches (e.g., binary classification, random generation). We also welcome descriptions and discussions of:  * computational tools that support people in using language creatively (e.g. tools for computer-assisted creative writing, intelligent thesauri); * computational and/or cognitive models of linguistic creativity; * metrics and tools for evaluating the performance of creativity-aware systems; * specific application scenarios of computational linguistic creativity; * design and implementation of creativity-aware systems.  Related topics, including corpora collection, elicitation, and annotation of creative language usage, will also be considered, as long as their relevance to automatic systems is clearly pointed out.  Invited Speaker ===============  Nick Montfort, MIT  Submissions ===========  Submissions should describe original, unpublished work. Papers are limited to 8 pages. The style files can be found here: [http://clear.colorado.edu/NAACLHLT2009/stylefiles.html]. No author information should be included in the papers, since reviewing will be blind. Papers not conforming to these requirements are subject to rejection without review. Papers should be submitted via START [https://www.softconf.com/naacl-hlt09/CALC2009/] in PDF format.  We encourage submissions from everyone. For those how are new to ACL conferences and workshops, or with special needs, we are planning to set up a lunch mentoring program. Let us know if you are interested. Also, a limited number of student travel grants might become available, intended for individuals with minority background and current residents of countries where conference travel funding is usually hard to find.  Important Dates ===============  Submission Deadline:	Feb 27, 2009 Notification Due:	Mar 30, 2009 Final Version Due:	Apr 12, 2009 Workshop:		Jun 04, 2009  Organizers ==========  * Anna Feldman, Montclair State University (anna.feldman@montclair.edu) * Birte Loenneker-Rodman, University of Hamburg, Germany (birte.loenneker@uni-hamburg.de)  Program Committee =================  * Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology; * Roberto Basili, University of Roma, Italy; * Amilcar Cardoso, University of Coimbra, Portugal; * Afsaneh Fazly, University of Toronto, Canada; * Eileen Fitzpatrick, Montclair State University; * Pablo Gervas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain; * Sam Glucksberg, Princeton University; * Jerry Hobbs, ISI, Marina del Rey; * Sid Horton, Northwestern University; * Diana Inkpen, University of Ottawa, Canada; * Mark Lee, Birmingham, UK; * Hugo Liu, MIT; * Xiaofei Lu, Penn State; * Ruli Manurung, University of Indonesia; * Katja Markert, University of Leeds, UK; * Rada Mihalcea, University of North Texas; * Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, The Netherlands; * Andrew Ortony, Northwestern University; * Vasile Rus, The University of Memphis; * Richard Sproat, Oregon Health and Science University; * Gerard Steen, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; * Carlo Strapparava, Istituto per la Ricerca Scientifica e Tecnologica, Trento, Italy; * Juergen Trouvain, Saarland University, Germany. 

7ème Atelier International sur Indexation Multimédia Par le Contenu.
7th International Workshop on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing

Lieu de la manifestation

Following the six successful previous events (Toulouse 1999, Brescia 2001, Rennes 2003, Riga 2005, Bordeaux 2007, London 2008), 2009 International Workshop on Content-Based Multimedia Indexing (CBMI) will be held on June 3-5, 2009 at the picturesque city of Chania, in Crete Island, Greece. It will be organized by Image, Video and Multimedia Laboratory of National Technical University of Athens. CBMI 2009 aims at bringing together the various communities involved in the different aspects of content-based multimedia indexing, such as image processing and information retrieval with current industrial trends and developments. CBMI 2009 is supported by IEEE, EURASIP, University of Athens. The technical program of CBMI 2009 will include presentation of invited plenary talks, special sessions as well as regular sessions with contributed research papers.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Multimedia indexing and retrieval (image, audio, video, text)
Matching and similarity search
Construction of high level indices
Multimedia content extraction
Identification and tracking of semantic regions in scenes
Multi-modal and cross-modal indexing
Content-based search
Multimedia data mining
Metadata generation, coding and transformation
Large scale multimedia database management
Summarisation, browsing and organization of multimedia content
Presentation and visualization tools
User interaction and relevance feedback
Personalization and content adaptation
Evaluation and metrics

Paper Submission

Prospective authors are invited to submit full papers at the conference web site: http://www.cbmi2009.org/submission. Style files (Latex and Word) will be provided for the convenience of the authors.

Important Dates

Venue

CBMI 2009 will be hosted at KAM - Mediterranean Centre of Architecture, Chania, at the island of Crete, one of the most exciting Greek destinations. KAM was settled by Chania municipality in 1996 and is situated since 2002 at Great Arsenali, the old port of Chania.

**********************************************
NASAL2009
DEUXIEME APPEL A COMMUNICATIONS
http://w3.umh.ac.be/~nasal/Workshop/appel.html
**********************************************


L'équipe Praxiling UMR 5267 CNRS (Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier 3)
et
le Laboratoire des Sciences de la Parole de l'Académie Universitaire
Wallonie-Bruxelles (Université de Mons-Hainaut) organisent un colloque
international consacré à la nasalité en phonétique et en phonologie.

Le colloque aura lieu le vendredi 5 juin 2009 de 9h00 à 18h30 au Grand
Amphithéâtre de la Délégation régionale du CNRS, 1919, route de Mende,
F-34293 Montpellier cedex 5.

L'objectif de ce colloque international est de permettre aux chercheurs du
monde entier de se réunir et d'échanger à propos de leurs travaux
récents
concernant la nasalité. Toute proposition de communication concernant la
nasalité est la bienvenue, en particulier les travaux concernant: la
production
(mesures articulatoires, études aérodynamiques, analyses acoustiques,
etc.),
la perception, les aspects phonologiques, les universaux phonétiques, la
modélisation, les langues peu décrites, les aspects pathologiques et
cliniques, l'acquisition du langage et l'apprentissage d'une langue
seconde. Un
intérêt tout particulier sera accordé aux communications traitant de
questions transversales aux champs disciplinaires cités ci-dessus :
multiinstrumentation, liens entre production et perception, comparaisons
inter-langues, relations entre l'organisation des systèmes phonologiques
et les
contraintes phonétiques, points communs et divergences entre acquisition
en L1
et apprentissage en L2, etc.


Conférenciers invités
Patrice S. Beddor, University of Michigan, USA
Didier Demolin, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgique
John Hajek, University of Melbourne, Australia
Ian Maddieson, University of Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
Alain Marchal, Université d'Aix-en-Provence, France
Jacqueline Vaissière, Université de Paris III, France


Comité scientifique
Pierre Badin, Gipsa-Lab, France
Nick Clements, Université de Paris III, France
Bernard Harmegnies, Université de Mons-Hainaut, Belgique
Sarah Hawkins, University of Cambridge, UK
Marie Huffman, State University of New York Stony Brook, USA
John Kingston, University of Massachussets at Amherst, USA
Christine Matyear, University of Texas at Austin, USA
John Ohala, University of California at Berkeley, USA
Daniel Recasens, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Espana
Ryan Shosted, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA
Maria Josep Solé, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Espana
Nathalie Vallée, Gipsa-Lab, France
Doug Whalen, Haskins Laboratories, USA


Date limite de soumission
15 février 2009

Modalités de soumission
Envoyer un message avec les coordonnées complètes du premier auteur et le
nom
des éventuels autres auteurs à nasal2009@umh.ac.be avec, en fichier
attaché,
un article anonyme de quatre pages A4 maximum sous la forme d'un fichier
pdf.
Un modèle de fichier Word est téléchargeable sur notre site web.

Notez par ailleurs que tous les intervenants seront invités à soumettre
une
version longue de leur communication (50000 caractères) pour une
éventuelle
publication dans un livre à paraître chez un éditeur international. Date
limite de soumission des papiers: autour du 14 septembre 2009.

Pour plus d'infos, visitez notre site web:
http://w3.umh.ac.be/~nasal/Workshop/appel.html


Pour le comité d'organisation,
V. Delvaux
Chargée de Recherches FNRS
Laboratoire de Phonétique
Service de Métrologie et Sciences du Langage
Université de Mons-Hainaut
18, Place du Parc
7000 Mons
Belgium
+3265373140

SPECOM 2009 - FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS

    13-th International Conference "Speech and Computer"
                             21-25 June 2009
     Grand Duke Vladimir's palace, St. Petersburg, Russia
                      http://www.specom.nw.ru

(!) Due to many requests the submission deadline has been postponed to Monday, February 9, 2009 (!) 

Organized by St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences (SPIIRAS)

Dear Colleagues, we are pleased to invite you to the 13-th International Conference on Speech and Computer SPECOM'2009, which will be held in June
21-25, 2009 in St.Petersburg. The global aim of the conference is to discuss state-of-the-art problems and recent achievements in Signal Processing and
Human-Computer Interaction related to speech technologies. Main topics of SPECOM'2009 are:
- Signal processing and feature extraction
- Multimodal analysis and synthesis
- Speech recognition and understanding
- Natural language processing
- Spoken dialogue systems
- Speaker and language identification
- Text-to-speech systems
- Speech perception and speech disorders
- Speech and language resources
- Applications for human-computer interaction

The official language of the event is English. Full papers up to 6 pages will be published in printed and electronic proceedings with ISBN.

Imporatnt Dates:
- Submission of full papers: February 1, 2009 (extended)
- Notification of acceptance: March 1, 2009
- Submission of final papers: March 20, 2009
- Early registration: March 20, 2009
- Conference dates: June 21-25, 2009

Scientific Committee:
Andrey Ronzhin, Russia (conference chairman)
Niels Ole Bernsen, Denmark
Denis Burnham, Australia
Jean Caelen, France
Christoph Draxler, Germany
Thierry Dutoit, Belgium
Hiroya Fujisaki, Japan
Sadaoki Furui, Japan
Jean-Paul Haton, France
Ruediger Hoffmann, Germany
Dimitri Kanevsky, USA
George Kokkinakis, Greece
Steven Krauwer, Netherlands
Lin-shan Lee, Taiwan
Boris Lobanov, Belarus
Benoit Macq, Belgium
Jury Marchuk, Russia
Roger Moore, UK
Heinrich Niemann, Germany
Rajmund Piotrowski, Russia
Louis Pols, Netherlands
Rodmonga Potapova, Russia
Josef Psutka, Czech Republic
Lawrence Rabiner, USA
Gerhard Rigoll, Germany
John Rubin, UK
Murat Saraclar, Turkey
Jesus Savage, Mexico
Pavel Skrelin, Russia
Viktor Sorokin, Russia
Yannis Stylianou, Greece
Jean E. Viallet, France
Taras Vintsiuk, Ukraine
Christian Wellekens, France

The invited speakers of SPECOM'2009 are:
- Prof. Walter Kellermann (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany), lecture "Towards Natural Acoustic Interfaces for Automatic Speech Recognition"
- Prof. Mikko Kurimo (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland), lecture "Unsupervised decomposition of words for speech recognition and retrieval"

The conference venue is House of Scientists (former Grand Duke Vladimir's palace) located in the very heart of the city, in the neighborhood
of the Winter Palace (Hermitage), the residence of Russian emperor, and the Peter's and Paul's Fortress. Independently of the scientific actions
we will provide essential possibilities for acquaintance with cultural and historical valuables of  Saint-Petersburg, the conference will be hosted
during a unique and wonderful period known as the White Nights.

Contact Information:
SPECOM'2009 Organizing Committee,
SPIIRAS, 39, 14-th line, St.Petersburg, 199178, RUSSIA
E-mail: specom@iias.spb.su
Web: http://www.specom.nw.ru 

at Johns Hopkins University invites one page research proposals for a

NSF-sponsored, Six-week Summer Research Workshop on

Machine Learning for Language Engineering

to be held in Baltimore, MD, USA,

June 22 to July 31, 2009.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

Deadline: Wednesday, October 15, 2008.

One-page proposals are invited for the 15^th annual NSF sponsored JHU summer workshop.  Proposals should be suitable for a six-week team exploration, and should aim to advance the state of the art in any of the various fields of Human Language Technology (HLT) including speech recognition, machine translation, information retrieval, text summarization and question answering.  This year, proposals in related areas of Machine Intelligence, such as Computer Vision (CV), that share techniques with HLT are also being solicited.  Research topics selected for investigation by teams in previous workshops may serve as good examples for your proposal. (See http://www.clsp.jhu.edu/workshops.)

Proposals on all topics of scientific interest to HLT and technically related areas are encouraged.  Proposals that address one of the following long-term challenges are particularly encouraged.

Ø  ROBUST TECHNOLOGY FOR SPEECH:  Technologies like speech transcription, speaker identification, and language identification share a common weakness: accuracy degrades disproportionately with seemingly small changes in input conditions (microphone, genre, speaker, dialect, etc.), where humans are able to adapt quickly and effectively. The aim is to develop technology whose performance would be minimally degraded by input signal variations.

Ø  KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY FROM LARGE UNSTRUCTURED TEXT COLLECTIONS: Scaling natural language processing (NLP) technologies—including parsing, information extraction, question answering, and machine translation—to very large collections of unstructured or informal text, and domain adaptation in NLP is of interest.

Ø  VISUAL SCENE INTERPRETATION: New strategies are needed to parse visual scenes or generic (novel) objects, analyzing an image as a set of spatially related components.  Such strategies may integrate global top-down knowledge of scene structure (e.g., generative models) with the kind of rich bottom-up, learned image features that have recently become popular for object detection.  They will support both learning and efficient search for the best analysis.

Ø  UNSUPERVISED AND SEMI-SUPERVISED LEARNING: Novel techniques that do not require extensive quantities of human annotated data to address any of the challenges above could potentially make large strides in machine performance as well as lead to greater robustness to changes in input conditions.  Semi-supervised and unsupervised learning techniques with applications to HLT and CV are therefore of considerable interest.

An independent panel of experts will screen all received proposals for suitability. Results of this screening will be communicated no later than October 22, 2008. Authors passing this initial screening will be invited to Baltimore to present their ideas to a peer-review panel on November 7-9, 2008.  It is expected that the proposals will be revised at this meeting to address any outstanding concerns or new ideas. Two or three research topics and the teams to tackle them will be selected for the 2009 workshop.

We attempt to bring the best researchers to the workshop to collaboratively pursue the selected topics for six weeks.  Authors of successful proposals typically become the team leaders.  Each topic brings together a diverse team of researchers and students.  The senior participants come from academia, industry and government.  Graduate student participants familiar with the field are selected in accordance with their demonstrated performance, usually by the senior researchers. Undergraduate participants, selected through a national search, will be rising seniors who are new to the field and have shown outstanding academic promise.

If you are interested in participating in the 2009 Summer Workshop we ask that you submit a one-page research proposal for consideration, detailing the problem to be addressed.  If your proposal passes the initial screening, we will invite you to join us for the organizational meeting in Baltimore (as our guest) for further discussions aimed at consensus.  If a topic in your area of interest is chosen as one of the two or three to be pursued next summer, we expect you to be available for participation in the six-week workshop. We are not asking for an ironclad commitment at this juncture, just a good faith understanding that if a project in your area of interest is chosen, you will actively pursue it.

Proposals should be submitted via e-mail to clsp@jhu.edu by 4PM EST on Wed, October 15, 2008.

DIAHOLMIA 2009: THE 13TH WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF DIALOGUE

KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, 24-26 June, 2009

The SemDial series of workshops aims to bring together researchers working on the semantics and pragmatics of dialogue in fields such as artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, formal semantics/pragmatics, philosophy, psychology, and neural science. DiaHolmia will be the 13th workshop in the SemDial series, and will be organized at the Department of Speech Music and Hearing, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology). KTH is Scandinavia's largest institution of higher education in technology and is located in central Stockholm (Holmia in Latin).

WEBSITE: www.diaholmia.org

DATES AND DEADLINES:

Full 8-page papers:
Submission due: 22 March 2009
Notification of acceptance: 25 April 2009
Final version due: 7 May 2009

2-page poster or demo descriptions:
Submission due: 25 April 2009
Notification of acceptance: 7 May 2009

DiaHolmia 2009: 24-26 June 2009 (Wednesday-Friday)

SCOPE:

We invite papers on all topics related to the semantics and pragmatics of dialogues, including, but not limited to:

- common ground/mutual belief
- turn-taking and interaction control
- dialogue and discourse structure
- goals, intentions and commitments
- natural language understanding/semantic interpretation
- reference, anaphora and ellipsis
- collaborative and situated dialogue
- multimodal dialogue
- extra- and paralinguistic phenomena
- categorization of dialogue phenomena in corpora
- designing and evaluating dialogue systems
- incremental, context-dependent processing
- reasoning in dialogue systems
- dialogue management

Full papers will be in the usual 8-page, 2-column format. There will also be poster and demo presentations. The selection of posters and demos will be based on 2-page descriptions. Selected descriptions will be included in the proceedings.

Details on programme and local arrangements will be announced at a later date.

The best accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions to Dialogue & Discourse, the new open-access journal dedicated exclusively to research on language 'beyond the single sentence' (www.dialogue-and-discourse.org).

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Harry Bunt (Tilburg University, Netherlands)
Nick Campbell (ATR, Japan)
Julia Hirschberg (Columbia University, New York)
Sverre Sjölander (Linköping University, Sweden)

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:

Jan Alexandersson, Srinivas Bangalore, Ellen Gurman Bard, Anton Benz, Johan Bos, Johan Boye, Harry Bunt, Donna Byron, Jean Carletta, Rolf Carlson, Robin Cooper, Paul Dekker, Giuseppe Di Fabbrizio, Raquel Fernández, Claire Gardent, Simon Garrod, Jonathan Ginzburg, Pat Healey, Peter Heeman, Mattias Heldner, Joris Hulstijn, Michael Johnston, Kristiina Jokinen, Arne Jönsson, Alistair Knott, Ivana Kruijff-Korbayova, Staffan Larsson, Oliver Lemon, Ian Lewin, Diane Litman, Susann Luperfoy, Colin Matheson, Nicolas Maudet, Michael McTear, Wolfgang Minker, Philippe Muller, Fabio Pianesi, Martin Pickering, Manfred Pinkal, Paul Piwek, Massimo Poesio, Alexandros Potamianos, Matthew Purver, Manny Rayner, Hannes Rieser, Laurent Romary, Alex Rudnicky, David Schlangen, Stephanie Seneff, Ronnie Smith, Mark Steedman, Amanda Stent, Matthew Stone, David Traum, Marilyn Walker and Mats Wirén

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Jens Edlund
Joakim Gustafson
Anna Hjalmarsson
Gabriel Skantze 

The Multimod 2009 conference - Multimodality of communication in children:
gestures, emotions, language and cognition is being organized jointly by
psychologists and linguists from the Universities of Toulouse (Toulouse II)
and Grenoble (Grenoble III) and will take place in Toulouse (France) from
Thursday 9th July to Saturday 11th July 2009.

The aim of the conference will be to assess research on theories, concepts
and methods relating to multimodality in children.

The invited speakers are :
- Susan Goldin-Meadow (University of Chicago, USA),
- Jana Iverson (University of Pittsburg, USA),
- Paul Harris (Harvard University, USA),
- Judy Reilly (San Diego State University, USA),
- Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon (University of Stirling, UK),
- Marianne Gullberg (MPI Nijmegen, The Netherlands).

We invite you to submit proposals for symposia, individual papers or posters
of original, previously unpublished research on all aspects of multimodal
communication in children, including:

- Gestures and language development, both typical and atypical
- Emotional development, both typical and atypical
- Multimodality of communication and bilingualism
- Gestural and/or emotional communication in non-human and human primates
- Multimodality of communication and didactics
- Multimodality of communication in the classroom
- Multimodality of communication and brain development
- Prosodic (emotional) aspects of language and communication development
- Pragmatic aspects of multimodality development

Please visit the conference website
http://w3.eccd.univ-tlse2.fr/multimod2009/ to find all useful Information
about submissions (individual papers, posters and symposia); the deadline
for submissions is December 15th, 2008. 

ACL-IJCNLP 2009 1st Call for Papers

Joint Conference of
the 47th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
and
the 4th International Joint Conference on Natural Language Processing of
the Asian Federation of Natural Language Processing

August 2 - 7, 2009
Singapore

http://www.acl-ijcnlp-2009.org

Full Paper Submission Deadline:  February 22, 2009 (Sunday)
Short Paper Submission Deadline:  April 26, 2009 (Sunday)

For the first time, the flagship conferences of the Association of
Computational Linguistics (ACL) and the Asian Federation of Natural
Language Processing (AFNLP) --the ACL and IJCNLP -- are jointly
organized as a single event. The conference will cover a broad
spectrum of technical areas related to natural language and
computation. ACL-IJCNLP 2009 will include full papers, short papers,
oral presentations, poster presentations, demonstrations, tutorials,
and workshops. The conference invites the submission of papers on
original and unpublished research on all aspects of computational
linguistics.

Important Dates:

* Feb 22, 2009    Full paper submissions due;
* Apr 12, 2009    Full paper notification of acceptance;
* Apr 26, 2009    Short paper submissions due;
* May 17, 2009    Camera-ready full papers due;
* May 31, 2009    Short Paper notification of acceptance;
* Jun 7, 2009       Camera-ready short papers due;
* Aug 2-7, 2009   ACL-IJCNLP 2009

Topics of interest:

Topics include, but are not limited to:

* Phonology/morphology, tagging and chunking, and word segmentation
* Grammar induction and development
* Parsing algorithms and implementations
* Mathematical linguistics and grammatical formalisms
* Lexical and ontological semantics
* Formal semantics and logic
* Word sense disambiguation
* Semantic role labeling
* Textual entailment and paraphrasing
* Discourse, dialogue, and pragmatics
* Language generation
* Summarization
* Machine translation
* Information retrieval
* Information extraction
* Sentiment analysis and opinion mining
* Question answering
* Text mining and natural language processing applications
* NLP in vertical domains, such as biomedical, chemical and legal text
* NLP on noisy unstructured text, such as email, blogs, and SMS
* Spoken language processing
* Speech recognition and synthesis
* Spoken language understanding and generation
* Language modeling for spoken language
* Multimodal representations and processing
* Rich transcription and spoken information retrieval
* Speech translation
* Statistical and machine learning methods
* Language modeling for text processing
* Lexicon and ontology development
* Treebank and corpus development
* Evaluation methods and user studies
* Science of annotation

Submissions:

Full Papers: Submissions must describe substantial, original,
completed and unpublished work. Wherever appropriate, concrete
evaluation and analysis should be included. Submissions will be judged
on correctness, originality, technical strength, significance,
relevance to the conference, and interest to the attendees. Each
submission will be reviewed by at least three program committee
members.

Full papers may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content, plus one
extra page for references, and will be presented orally or as a poster
presentation as determined by the program committee.  The decisions as
to which papers will be presented orally and which as poster
presentations will be based on the nature rather than on the quality
of the work. There will be no distinction in the proceedings between
full papers presented orally and those presented as poster
presentations.

The deadline for full papers is February 22, 2009 (GMT+8). Submission
is electronic using paper submission software at:
https://www.softconf.com/acl-ijcnlp09/papers

Short papers: ACL-IJCNLP 2009 solicits short papers as well. Short
paper submissions must describe original and unpublished work. The
short paper deadline is just about three months before the conference
to accommodate the following types of papers:

* A small, focused contribution
* Work in progress
* A negative result
* An opinion piece
* An interesting application nugget

Short papers will be presented in one or more oral or poster sessions,
and will be given four pages in the proceedings. While short papers
will be distinguished from full papers in the proceedings, there will
be no distinction in the proceedings between short papers presented
orally and those presented as poster presentations. Each short paper
submission will be reviewed by at least two program committee members.
The deadline for short papers is April 26, 2009 (GMT + 8).  Submission
is electronic using paper submission software at:
https://www.softconf.com/acl-ijcnlp09/shortpapers

Format:

Full paper submissions should follow the two-column format of
ACL-IJCNLP 2009 proceedings without exceeding eight (8) pages of
content plus one extra page for references.  Short paper submissions
should also follow the two-column format of ACL-IJCNLP 2009
proceedings, and should not exceed four (4) pages, including
references. We strongly recommend the use of ACL LaTeX style files or
Microsoft Word style files tailored for this year's conference, which
are available on the conference website under Information for Authors.
Submissions must conform to the official ACL-IJCNLP 2009 style
guidelines, which are contained in the style files, and they must be
electronic in PDF.

As the reviewing will be blind, the paper must not include the
authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore, self-references that
reveal the author's identity, e.g., "We previously showed (Smith,
1991) ...", must be avoided. Instead, use citations such as "Smith
previously showed (Smith, 1991) ...". Papers that do not conform to
these requirements will be rejected without review.

Multiple-submission policy:

Papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or
publications must provide this information at submission time. If
ACL-IJCNLP 2009 accepts a paper, authors must notify the program
chairs by April 19, 2009 (full papers) or June 7, 2009 (short papers),
indicating which meeting they choose for presentation of their work.
ACL-IJCNLP 2009 cannot accept for publication or presentation work
that will be (or has been) published elsewhere.

Mentoring Service:

ACL is providing a mentoring (coaching) service for authors from
regions of the world where English is less emphasized as a language of
scientific exchange. Many authors from these regions, although able to
read the scientific literature in English, have little or no
experience in writing papers in English for conferences such as the
ACL meetings. The service will be arranged as follows. A set of
potential mentors will be identified by Mentoring Service Chairs Ng,
Hwee Tou (NUS, Singapore) and Reeder, Florence (Mitre, USA), who will
organize this service for ACL-IJCNLP 2009. If you would like to take
advantage of the service, please upload your paper in PDF format by
January 14, 2009 for long papers and March 18 2009 for short papers
using the paper submission software for mentoring service which will
be available at conference website.

An appropriate mentor will be assigned to your paper and the mentor
will get back to you by February 8 for long papers or April 12 for
short papers, at least 2 weeks before the deadline for the submission
to the ACL-IJCNLP 2009 program committee.

Please note that this service is for the benefit of the authors as
described above. It is not a general mentoring service for authors to
improve the technical content of their papers.

If you have any questions about this service please feel free to send
a message to Ng, Hwee Tou (nght[at]comp.nus.edu.sg) or Reeder,
Florence (floreederacl[at]yahoo.com).

General Conference Chair:
Su, Keh-Yih (Behavior Design Corp., Taiwan; kysu[at]bdc.com.tw)

Program Committee Chairs:
Su, Jian (Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore;
sujian[at]i2r.a-star.edu.sg)
Wiebe, Janyce (University of Pittsburgh, USA; janycewiebe[at]gmail.com)

Area Chairs:
Agirre, Eneko (University of Basque Country, Spain; e.agirre[at]ehu.es)
Ananiodou, Sophia (University of Manchester, UK;
      sophia.ananiadou[at]manchester.ac.uk)
Belz, Anja (University of Brighton, UK; a.s.belz[at]itri.brighton.ac.uk)
Carenini, Giuseppe (University of British Columbia, Canada;
carenini[at]cs.ubc.ca)
Chen, Hsin-Hsi (National Taiwan University, TaiWan, hh_chen[at]csie.ntu.edu.tw)
Chen, Keh-Jiann (Sinica, Tai Wan, kchen[at]iis.sinica.edu.tw)
Curran, James (University of Sydney, Australia; james[at]it.usyd.edu.au)
Gao, Jian Feng (MSR, USA; jfgao[at]microsoft.com)
Harabagiu, Sanda (University of Texas at Dallas, USA, sanda[at]hlt.utdallas.edu)
Koehn, Philipp (University of Edinburgh, UK; pkoehn[at]inf.ed.ac.uk)
Kondrak, Grzegorz (University of Alberta, Canada; kondrak[at]cs.ualberta.ca)
Meng, Helen Mei-Ling (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong;
      hmmeng[at]se.cuhk.edu.hk )
Mihalcea, Rada (University of Northern Texas, USA; rada[at]cs.unt.edu)
Poesio, Massimo(University of Trento, Italy; poesio[at]disi.unitn.it)
Riloff, Ellen (University of Utah, USA; riloff[at]cs.utah.edu)
Sekine, Satoshi (New York University, USA; sekine[at]cs.nyu.edu)
Smith, Noah (CMU, USA; nasmith[at]cs.cmu.edu)
Strube, Michael (EML Research, Germany; strube[at]eml-research.de)
Suzuki, Jun (NTT, Japan; jun[at]cslab.kecl.ntt.co.jp)
Wang, Hai Feng (Toshiba, China; wanghaifeng[at]rdc.toshiba.com.cn) 

IDP 09 : CALL FOR PAPERS

Discourse – Prosody Interface

Paris, September 9-10-11, 2009

The third round of the “Discourse – Prosody Interface” Conference will be hosted by the Laboratoire de Linguistique Formelle (UMR 7110 / LLF), the Equipe CLILLAC-ARP (EA 3967) and the Linguistic Department (UFRL) of the University of Paris-Diderot (Paris 7), on September 9-10-11, 2009 in Paris. The first round was organized by the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (UMR 6057 /LPL) in September 2005, in Aix-en-Provence. The second took place in Geneva in September 2007 and was organized by the Department of Linguistics at the University of Geneva, in collaboration with the École de Langue et Civilisation Françaises at the University of Geneva, and the VALIBEL research centre at the Catholic University of Louvain.

The third round will be held at the Paris Center of the University of Chicago, 6, rue Thomas Mann, in the XIIIth arrondissement, near the Bibliothèque François Mitterrand (BNF).

The Conference is addressed to researchers in prosody, phonology, phonetics, pragmatics, discourse analysis and also psycholinguistics, who are particularly interested in the relations between prosody and discourse. The participants may develop their research programmes within different theoretical paradigms (formal approaches to phonology and semantics/ pragmatics, conversation analysis, descriptive linguistics, etc.). For this third edition, spécial attention will be given to research work that propose a formal analysis of the Discourse- Prosody interface.

So as to favour convergence among contributions, the IDP09 conference will focus on :

* Prosody, its parts and discourse :

- How to analyze the interaction between the different prosodic subsystems (accentuation,

intonation, rhythm; register changes or voice quality)?

- How to model the contribution of each subsystem to the global interpretation of discourse?

- How to describe and analyze prosodic facts, and at which level (phonetic vs. phonological) ?

* Prosodic units & discourse units

- What are the relevant units for discourse or conversation analysis ? What are their prosodic

properties ?

- How the embedding of utterances in discourse is marked syntactically or prosodically ?

What consequence of the modelling of syntax & prosody ?

* Prosody and context(s)

- What is the contribution of the context in the analysis of prosody in discourse?

- How can the relations between prosody and context(s) be modelled?

* Acquisition of the relations between prosody & discourse in L1 and L2

- How are the relations between prosody & discourse acquired in L1, in L2 ?

- Which methodological tools could best describe and transcribe these processes ?

Guest speakers :

* Diane Blakemore (School of Languages, University of Salford, United Kingdom)

* Piet Mertens (Department of Linguistics, K.U Leuven, Belgium)

* Hubert Truckenbrodt (ZAS, Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin,

Germany)

Conference will be held in English or French. Studies can be about any language.

Submission will be made by uploading an anonymous two pages abstract (plus an extra page for references and figures) in A4 and with Times 12 font, written in either English or French as PDF file at the following address : http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=idp09 .

Author’s name and affiliation should be given as requested, but not in the PDF file.

If you have any question concerning the submission procedure or you encounter any problem,

please send an email at the following address : idp09@linguist.jussieu.fr

Authors may submit as many proposals as they wish.

The proposals will be evaluated anonymously by the scientific committee.

Schedule

• Submission deadline: April, 26th, 2009

• Notification of acceptation: June, 8th, 2009

• Conference (IDP 09): September 9th-11th, 2009.

Further information is available on the conférence website : http://idp09.linguist.univ-paris-diderot.fr

First Call for Papers

================================================

7th International Conference on Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing

RANLP-2009

14-16 September 2009   Borovets, Bulgaria

http://www.lml.bas.bg/ranlp2009

================================================

The conference will take the form of addresses from invited keynote speakers plus peer-reviewed individual papers. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Selected papers are traditionally published by John Benjamins Publishers. There will also be an exhibition area for poster and demo sessions.

The conference will be preceded by two days of tutorials (12-13 September 2009). Post-conference workshops will be held during 17-18 September 2009.

TOPICS

We invite papers reporting on recent advances in all aspects of Natural Language Processing (NLP). We encourage the representation of a broad range of areas including but not limited to: phonetics, phonology, and morphology; syntax; semantics; discourse, dialogue and pragmatics;  terminology; electronic dictionaries; mathematical models and complexity; corpus-based language processing; text understanding and generation; POS tagging; parsing; semantic processing; temporal processing; textual entailment; knowledge acquisition; word-sense disambiguation; mention detection; anaphora resolution/coreference; relation extraction; meronymy identification; parallel NLP algorithms; speech recognition; text-to-speech synthesis; multilingual NLP; machine translation, machine-aided translation, translation memory systems, translation aids and tools; information retrieval; text and web mining; information extraction; text summarisation; term recognition; text categorisation; question answering; opinion mining and sentiment analysis; demographic analysis; dialogue systems; computer-aided language learning; biomedical NLP; language resources; evaluation; visualisation; and theoretical and application-orientated papers related to NLP of every kind.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

-- Shalom Lappin (King's College, London)

-- Massimo Poesio (University of Essex)

-- Mirella Lapata (University of Edinburgh)

TUTORIALS

Tutorial lecturers will be listed in the 2nd CFP.

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE

The PC members are distinguished experts from all over the world. The list of PC members will be announced in the 2nd CFP.

WORKSHOPS

Several workshops will be organised after the main conference. A call for workshop proposals will be sent out shortly.

SUBMISSION (PAPERS, POSTERS, DEMOS)

Submissions should be A4, two-column format and should not exceed 7 pages (poster and demo submissions should be no longer than 5 pages), including main body, figures, tables and bibliography. Times New Roman 12 font is preferred. The first page should state the title of the paper followed by keywords and an abstract and continue with the first section of the paper. Articles should be submitted electronically in **PDF** format. For free conversions to PDF see https://createpdf.adobe.com/index.pl?BP=NS The review process is annonymous. Submissions will be reviewed by 3 members of the Programme Committee. Submission and camera ready copy guidelines will be also available at the conference web site.

IMPORTANT DATES

Workshop proposals due: 16 February 2009

Workshop selection: 2 March 2009

Conference paper registration (abstracts): 6 April 2009

Conference paper submission deadline: 13 April 2009

Conference paper acceptance notification: 1 June 2009

Conference camera ready papers due: 13 July 2009

Workshop paper submission deadline (tentative): 3 June 2009

Workshop paper acceptance notification (tentative): 20 July 2009

Workshop camera ready papers due (tentative): 24 August 2009

Tutorials: 12-13 September 2009 (Sat-Sun)

Main conference: 14-16 September 2009 (Mon-Wed)

Workshops: 17-18 September 2009 (Thu-Fri)

VENUE

Hotel Samokov, Borovets. The picturesque resort of Borovets is located in the Rila mountains and is one of the best known winter resorts in South-East Europe, a frequent meeting place for the elite in world skiing. The resort is 1350m above sea level, at the foot of the highest peak on the Balkan Peninsula - Moussala (2925m). The resort of Borovets is 73km from Sofia and the Sofia International Airport can serve as arrival/departure point. In addition to regular public transport, the organisers will provide daily shuttle buses from Sofia airport to the conference location at an inexpensive rate. A taxi from Sofia to Borovets is relatively cheap.

THE TEAM BEHIND RANLP-2009

-- Galia Angelova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria (Organising Committee Chair)

-- Kalina Bontcheva, University of Sheffield, U.K.

-- Ruslan Mitkov, University of Wolverhampton, U.K. (Programme Committee Chair)

-- Nicolas Nicolov, J.D.Power and Associates [McGraw-Hill company], U.S.A. (Editor of the volume with selected papers)

-- Nikolai Nikolov, INCOMA Ltd., Shoumen, Bulgaria

-- Kiril Simov, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria (Workshop Coordinator)

The main local organiser is the Linguistic Modelling Department, Institute for Parallel Processing, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.

CONTACT: ranlp2009[AT]lml[dot]bas[dot]bg

Dr Nicolas Nicolov

Senior Director

J.D. Power and Associates [McGraw-Hill company]

Web Intelligence REsearch Division (WIRED)

4888 Pearl East Circle, Suite 300W

Boulder, CO 80301, U.S.A.

                   2009 APSIPA Annual Summit and Conference October 5 - 7, 2009 
  
                                   Sapporo Convention Center, Sapporo, Japan 
  
2009 APSIPA Annual Summit and Conference is the inaugural event supported by the Asia-Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA). The APSIPA is a new association and it promotes all aspects of research and education on signal processing, information technology, and communications. The field of interest of APSIPA concerns all aspects of signals and information including processing, recognition, classification, communications, networking, computing, system design, security, implementation, and technology with applications to scientific, engineering, and social areas. The topics for regular sessions include, but are not limited to: 
  
Signal Processing  Track
  
1.1 Audio, speech, and language processing 
  
1.2 Image, video, and multimedia signal processing 
  
1.3 Information forensics and security 
  
1.4 Signal processing for communications 
  
1.5 Signal processing theory and methods 
  
 
  
Sapporo and Conference Venue: One of many nice cities in Japan, Sapporo is always recognized as a quite beautiful and well-organized city. With a population of 1,800,000, Hokkaido's largest/capital city, Sapporo, is fully serviced by a network of subway, streetcar, and bus lines connecting to its full compliment of hotel accommodations. Sapporo has already played host to international meetings, sports events, and academic societies. There are a lot of flights from/to Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka et al. and overseas cities. With all the amenities of a major city yet in balance with its natural surroundings, this beautiful northern capital, Sapporo, is well-equipped to offer a new generation of conventions. 
  
 Important Due Dates and Author's Schedule: 
  
Proposals for Special Session: March 1, 2009 
  
Proposals for Forum, Panel and Tutorial Sessions: March 20, 2009 
  
Deadline for Submission of Full-Papers: March 31, 2009 
  
Notification of Acceptance: July 1, 2009 
  
Deadline for Submission of Camera Ready Papers: August 1, 2009 
  
Conference dates: October 5 - 7, 2009
  
Submission of Papers: Prospective authors are invited to submit either long papers, up to 10 pages in length, or short papers up to four pages in length, where long papers will be for the single-track oral presentation and short papers will be mostly for poster presentation. The conference proceedings will be published, available, and maintained at the APSIPA website. 
  
Detail  Information: WEB Site : http://www.gcoe.ist.hokudai.ac.jp/apsipa2009/ 
  
Organizing Committee:
  
 Honorary Chair : Sadaoki Furui, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan 
  
General co-Chairs : Yoshikazu Miyanaga, Hokkaido University, Japan K. J. Ray Liu, University of     Maryland,USA 
  
Technical Program co-Chairs : Hitoshi Kiya, Tokyo Metropolitan Univ., Japan Tomoaki Ohtsuki, Keio University, Japan Mark Liao, Academia Sinica, Taiwan Takao Onoye, Osaka University, Japan

Call for Papers

2009 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and

Acoustics

Mohonk Mountain House

New Paltz, New York

October 18-21, 2009

http://www.waspaa2009.com

The 2009 IEEE Workshop on Applications of Signal Processing to Audio and

Acoustics (WASPAA'09) will be held at the Mohonk Mountain House in New

Paltz, New York, and is sponsored by the Audio & Electroacoustics committee

of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. The objective of this workshop is to

provide an informal environment for the discussion of problems in audio and

acoustics and the signal processing techniques leading to novel solutions.

Technical sessions will be scheduled throughout the day. Afternoons will be