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Deep dive into brain, machine, and the gap in speech processing

WiSSAP 2019

27th-29th January 2019
Thiruvananthapuram, India

About

WiSSAP is an annual winter school, organized in India since past 12 years. It provides a forum for researchers to enhance their expertise by exposing to research areas in the field of speech and audio signal processing. The past 12 WiSSAPs have covered different aspects of speech and audio processing – perception/ recognition/ coding/ enhancement/ synthesis/ spatialization/ production/ hearing- aid etc. We are excited to share with you that the theme for WiSSAP 2019 is - Deep dive into brain, machine, and the gap in speech processing. The event will host invited talks and tutorials by eminent researchers in the field of human speech perception, automatic speech recognition, and deep learning.

Deep dive into brain, machinem and the gap in speech processing

What does it mean?

With the advent of techniques and computational approaches to probe brain signals, curiosity to draw comparison between machine and human performance has increased. The understanding of speech perception and recognition has benefited from this curiosity. In this WiSSAP, we will meet together to dive deeper into these and related topics, and identify how the insights can aid in design of machine systems for robust speech recognition.

Expert Talks

Our invited experts will share their research findings, learnt over years of experiments. This will feature researchers studying speech perception and cognition via experimentation with human brain, and building machine systems with state-of-the-art algorithms for robust speech recognition.

Tutorials

There are varied approaches used to probe brain to gain understanding of speech perception and cognition. These includes clever design of stimuli, listening tests, and EEG data analysis. When it comes to design of machine systems for automatic speech recognition, deep learning based approaches have made given a significant boost in performance. The workshop will feature two tutorials to bootstrap the participants on these areas.

Work-in-Progress Talks

The WiSSAP also gives a podium for particiapnts to share their ongoing research along the theme of the workshop. This will feature 20 mins short-talks by interested participants, enabling them to share their curiosity and receive suggestions from the larger research community.

Panel Discussion

A meeting of great minds is incomplete without a brain storming session. This will feature a panel discussion with panelists drawn from academia and industry to discuss - "Is the changing landscape of speech recognition systems challenging reserach?".

Speakers

Know more about our invited experts

Below is a list of confirmed speakers as of now. We will updated more as soon as we get the confirmation.

Skaterboy
Auditory Neuroscience

Lori L. Holt

Lori L. Holt

Dr. Holt is an expert in auditory cognitive neuroscience, with a focus on understanding how humans interpret the complexity of spoken language. Her research program builds from considering human speech recognition as arising from general, and not uniquely human or speech-specific, mechanisms. Her training includes single-unit electrohphysiology and animal behavioral models of audition in addition to human behavioral methods across development. Her current research program exploits human psychophysics and learning paradigms in adults and children, human electrophysiology, neuroimaging, animal behavioral models and acoustic analyses.More here.

Shutterbug
Auditory Neuroscience

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (born 1964) is Director of the Carnegie Mellon University Neuroscience Institute and a Professor of Psychology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering. Prior to moving to Carnegie Mellon, she was a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University (BU). She attended Brown University as an undergraduate, where she earned an Sc.B. in Electrical Engineering. She earned both her master's degree and Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Electrical and Computer Engineering. She worked at Bell Communications Research, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Sensimetrics before joining the faculty at BU. She is an auditory neuroscientist best known for her work on attention and the cocktail party problem, sound localization, and the effects of room acoustics and reverberation on hearing.More here.

What researchers are saying?

  • In my view "old speech" through deep networks is NOT deep-speech. Human speech/language are fantastic domains to explore human brain.

    T. V. Sreenivas Professor, IISc, Bangalore.

  • The "deep" speech revolution has begun. The research on speech understanding is witnessing exciting time.

    Sriram Ganapathy Professor, IISc, Bangalore.

  • Machines take all and process but brains discard and process. Looking forward to learn more from the upcoming WiSSAP.

    Neeraj Sharma Postdoctoral Fellow, CMU, USA.

In God's Own Country

Venue

College of Engineering Trivandrum
Engineering College P.O
Thiruvananathapuram
Kerala, PIN 695016, INDIA
Reaching the venue from the nearest airport: click here.
Reaching the venus from the nearest railway station: click here.


Thiruvananthapuram (formerly called Trivandrum) is a notable academic and research hub in southern India, and also a major tourist hub in India. Kovalam and Varkala are popular beach towns located near the city. The Padmanabhaswamy Temple in the city is one of the richest temples in the world. Other places of interest include Agasthyamala rain forests, Neyyar Wildlife Sanctuary, Kallar, Braemore, Ponmudi hills, Poovar, Anchuthengu backwaters, Varkala Cliffs and Kappil-Edava lakes. The city is also known for its unique style of architecture involving Kerala Architecture with British and Dravidian influences. For more information click here.

We are getting ready.

Registration

The registration link will be up soon.

Past WiSSAPs

This is our 14th WiSSAP.

We have been privileged to have a exciting learning experiences from our past WiSSAPs. Our past invited speakers have included: Rainer Martin, T. V. Ananthapadmanabha, Ivan Tashev, Christof Faller,Emanuel Habets, Marc Swerts, Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, Yi Xu, Kalika Bali, Shrikanth (Shri) S. Narayanan, Shihab Shamma, Hynek Hermansky, Li Deng, Tanja Schultz, Tara Sainath Julia Hirschberg, Simon King, Tomoki Toda, Martin Cooke, De Liang Wang, Daniel P. W. Ellis, Bhiksha Raj, Gautham J.Mysore, V Ramasubramanian, Birger Kollmeier, B. Yegnanarayana, Walter Kellermann, Xavier Serra, Malcolm Slaney, John Makhoul, Jiri Navratil, Andreas Stolcke, Frédéric Bimbot, Alan W. Black, Jan P. H. van Santen, Richard Sproat, Kuldip Paliwal, Bastiaan Kleijn, K. Brandenburg, Steve Levinson, and T. Svendsen. Use the links below to see the details of past WiSSAPs.

Signal processing for speech and hearing disorders
WiSSAP 2018
Spatial audio processing
WiSSAP 2017
Speech prosody
WiSSAP 2016
Production-perception based speech analysis
WiSSAP 2015
Deep learning for multi-lingual speech processing
WiSSAP 2014
Statistical parameter speech synthesis
WiSSAP 2013
Computational auditory scene analysis
WiSSAP 2012
Speech Enhancement
WiSSAP 2011
Audio content analysis and retrieval
WiSSAP 2010
Speech and language recognition
WiSSAP 2009
Speech synthesis
WiSSAP 2008
Speech and audio coding
WiSSAP 2007
Automatic speech recognition and understanding
WiSSAP 2006

Contact

Get In Touch.

To know more details in relation to the theme, sponsorship, and participation, feel free to contact below programme committee members at email address:
x@y.

Programme Committee
Suresh Kumaraswamy
College of Engineering, Trivandrum
x = suresh.kumaraswamy
y = gmail.com
Sriram Ganapathy
Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore
x = sriramg
y = iisc.ac.in
Neeraj Sharma
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
x = neerajww
y = gmail.com