Background

ISCA Student Section was established by the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) in June 2004 in order to expand its services to all student members in a "student-driven" effort. The idea of having a Student Section was first discussed during the student reception at Interspeech 2003 in Geneva between a group of students and ISCA board members. After the conference, a call for volunteers was announced and, soon after, the student volunteer group was formed; the first student committee consisted of 10 members. After the first year, a more formal structure for the Student Section was proposed. The ISCA Student Section meeting at Interspeech 2005 in Lisbon marked the birth of what today is called the Student Advisory Committee (ISCA-SAC). The Student Advisory Board was created to organize and coordinate student-driven projects that would have an impact on the speech and language processing community.

Since then, the ISCA Student Section has grown and today consists of the Student Advisory Board (5 members) and a student volunteer team. The motivation for having a Board/Volunteer-type structure is simple – flexibility. Interested student volunteers can take on responsibilities at a level that fits their schedule. Motivated student volunteers who have shown commitment and excitement are invited by ISCA-SAC to become Board members, even after only a couple of months onboard. From our experiences, this two-step process has shown to be successful. All Student Section project proposals are discussed between ISCA-SAC Board members and communicated to the ISCA Board (via the ISCA Student Coordinator) by the ISCA-SAC President. Below, our mission is described, as well as some of the projects that are currently underway.

Our mission:

Ultimately, the aim of the ISCA Student Section is to put forward ideas for the expansion of student activities within ISCA and to implement them. As will be shown below, some of our projects target the speech and language research community as a whole and are not limited to students. Currently, our mission is three-fold: (1) increase interaction among students and senior researchers, (2) facilitate access to information, and (3) raise awareness of speech and language research to students (both undergraduate and graduate) who do not have experience in the speech and language processing area. To reach these goals, the following projects have been concluded or are currently underway:

Creation of the ISCA student website. The website is concluded and now hosts a repository of different resources such as a list with upcoming conferences, recently published books and theses, and publicly available source code. The website also hosts research forums, a conference room share service and several mailing lists, thus serving as a digital aid for students to stay updated about the things going on in their research fields. Students who wish to post to the forums or to share new resources with the research community are asked to register to the website. Registration to the website does not require an ISCA membership, it is free! Setting up an account is easy and fast; want to give it a try?

 
Organization of a student session (Educational Series) to be held annually at Interspeech conferences. Senior researchers are invited to talk about diverse topics that are of interest to students. Last year during Interspeech 2006, the discussion focused on career opportunities. This year during Interspeech 2007, the special session will focus on improving presentation skills. This year’s speakers will be Prof. Mari Ostendorf from the University of Washington and Prof. Roger Moore from the University of Sheffield. Students are encouraged to send questions to the speakers beforehand through our online submission form.

Facilitate access to information by making the ISCA Archive available on Google Scholar. This project consisted of a collaboration between ISCA Student Section, ISCA technical staff, and Google Scholar staff. Metadata was extracted from the entire ISCA Archive (over 15000 papers from over 100 different conferences and workshops); Archive servers were reconfigured and Google Scholar crawlers have been granted access. Once some technical issues are resolved, archive papers will also be searchable through Google searches ... stay tuned!

And our activities don't stop here, some of our future endeavors include:

Organization of a Round Table Discussion and Lunch with Senior Researchers to be held during Interspeech conferences. The event will facilitate the interaction among students and senior researchers. Each table will focus on one specific research topic and discussions will be led by experts in the field. And by the way, lunch will be on us!

Organization of a Doctoral Consortium to be held in conjunction with future Interspeech conferences. The Consortium will provide an opportunity for PhD students, especially those early in the process of identifying a thesis topic, to receive feedback on their ideas. The Doctoral Consortium will involve a series of presentations by PhD students about work they are considering or have already started pursuing. Each talk will be immediately followed by feedback from a panel of established researchers and from the audience, which will consist of both researchers and students. The Doctoral Consortium is planned to be held in parallel to the existing ISCA-promoted Christian Benoît Mentoring Scheme which attempts to match the experience of volunteer senior scientists with requests for help and guidance from junior colleagues in different institutions around the world.

 
Organization of a Local Outreach Program. In our opinion, undergraduate students, especially those in their early years, do not have a firm idea of issues such as: what speech and language research is, what the value of a PhD is, how one prepares oneself for a PhD and applies to grad school, and so on.  The goal of the Local Outreach Program is to provide undergraduate students with the answers to these questions, increasing their appreciation for speech and language research, and enabling them to make informed decisions about their future. The Program will involve a talk at a local university (commonly, the one sponsoring or helping organize future Interspeech conferences) to focus on the general topics of PhD studies in speech and language research. Speakers will include PhD students, as well as young or senior researchers.

And that's not all! Look for our ISCA Student Section booth at Interspeech 2007 where prize draws and student gatherings will be announced. 

If you have interesting ideas on how to further improve our website, or if you think of other student-oriented services that could be  implemented by the ISCA Student Section, please do not hesitate to contact us.