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12thAnnual Conference of the
International Speech Communication Association
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sponsors
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Interspeech 2011 Florence |
Keynotes
The Interspeech 2011 Organising committee is pleased to announce the acceptance of the following distinguished speakers to give plenary talks at the conference.
Sunday: August 28th 2011- 2011 ISCA Medallist
Monday: August 29th, 2011
Honest Signals
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Prof. Alex 'Sandy' Pentland
Toshiba Professor of Media, Arts, and Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
https://www.media.mit.edu/~pentland |
Abstract
How did humans coordinate before we had sophisticated language capabilities? Pre-linguistic social species coordinate by signaling, and in particular `honest signals' which actually cause changes in the listener. I will present examples of human behaviors that are likely honest signals, and show that they can be used to predict the outcomes of dyadic interactions (dating, negotiation, trust assessment, etc.) with an average accuracy of 80%. Patterns of signaling also allow accurate identification of social and task roles in small groups, predict task performance in small groups, guide team formation, and understand aspects of organizational performance. These experiments suggest that modern language evolved `on top' of ancient signaling mechanisms, and that today linguistic and signaling mechanisms operate in parallel.
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Professor Alex 'Sandy' Pentland is a pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering, and mobile information systems. He directs the MIT Human Dynamics Lab, developing computational social science and using this new science to guide organizational engineering. �He also directs the Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, spinning off companies to bring MIT technologies into the real world.�� He is among the most-cited computer scientists in the world.Professor Alex "Sandy" Pentland is a pioneer in computational social science, organizational engineering, and mobile information systems. He directs the MIT Human Dynamics Lab, developing computational social science and using this new science to guide organizational engineering. �He also directs the Media Lab Entrepreneurship Program, spinning off companies to bring MIT technologies into the real world.�� He is among the most-cited computer scientists in the world.
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Tuesday: August 30th, 2011
Prof. Tom M. Mitchell E. Fredkin University Professor Chair, Machine Learning Department School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/ |
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Professor Tom M. Mitchel is a professor in� the E. Fredkin University and head of the
Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research
interests lie in cognitive neuroscience, machine learning, natural language
processing, and artificial intelligence. Mitchell is a member of the US
National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and Fellow and Past President of the
Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). Mitchell
believes the field of machine learning will be the fastest growing branch of
computer science during the 21st century. |
Neural Representations of Word Meanings
How does the human brain represent meanings of words and pictures in terms
of neural activity? This talk will present our research addressing this
question, by applying machine learning algorithms to fMRI and MEG brain
image data. One line of our research involves training classifiers that
identify which word a person is thinking about, based on their observed
neural activity. A second line involves training computational models that
predict the neural activity associated with arbitrary English words,
including words for which we do not yet have brain image data. A third line
of work involves examining neural activity at millisecond time resolution
during the comprehension of words and phrases.
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Wednesday: August 31st, 2011
Round Table Future and Applications of Speech and Language Technologies for the Good Health of Society.
Prof. Gabriele Miceli
Neuro Science - Language disorders: viewpoints on a complex object
Prof. Bj�rn Granstr�m
Speech Technology Application: Application to Patient Rehabilitation
Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro
Future Technology: From teleoperated androids to cellphones as surrogates |
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Prof. Gabriele Miceli
Università degli Studi di Trento
Dipartimento di Scienze della Cognizione e della Formazione
https://discof.unitn.it |
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Prof. Gabriele Miceli. Medical degree in 1974; Board-certified in Neurology (1978) and Psychiatry (1983). Research physician (1976-1991) and Associate professor of Neurology (1991-2006) at the Catholic University, Rome. Since 2006, professor of Neurology and Clinical director, Center for Neurocognitive Rehabilitation at the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento. Author of over 80 papers published in peer-reviewed journals (including Nature and Nature Neuroscience), of 4 books, and of test batteries for the analysis of acquired language disorders in Italian, one of which has been translated into Spanish and Chinese. Invited talks to European and US institutions and to Italian institutions. Keynote addresses at Italian and international conferences. Member of the Editorial Board of several international journals. Ongoing collaborations with international instritutions (Harvard University; University of Potsdam; University of Newcastle; University of Groningen) and with Italian institutions (Fondazione Santa Lucia IRCCS, Rome; University of Verona; University of Milan; La Bicocca University, Milan; Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento).
Main interests: cognitive neuroscience of language (functional neuroimaging studies on control populations; studies in the cognitive neurology of aphasia); neuroplasticity and recovery from brain damage. Neuropsychological investigations aimed at:
a. understanding the mechanisms underlying language representation and processing;
b. correlating such mechanisms to the neural substrate;
c. developing experimental treatments of cognitive disorders in brain-damaged subjects.
Neuroimaging investigations aimed at:
a. identifying the neural substrates normally involved in word processing;
b. understanding how these substrates (mal)function under conditions of brain damage;
c. understanding how they can be modified by therapeutic interventions.
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Language disorders: viewpoints on a complex object
Aphasia is a common consequence of left hemisphere damage (due to stroke, trauma, tumor, encephalitis, etc). It is estimated that in Italy (60.000.000 inhabitants) approximately 200.000 individuals suffer from vascular aphasia. Aphasic disorders are heterogeneous. They can affect phonology, orthography, lexicon, semantics, syntax, verbal working memory, etc., selectively or in various combinations. Damage to each level of language representation/processing can affect comprehension, production, or both; and, it can take different forms (eg, semantic loss may selectively affect conspecifics, animals, plant life, artifacts). The diagnosis of aphasia relies on neuroimaging and behavioral measures. Given the diversity of clinical manifestations, coarse-grained diagnoses are fast and easy, but fine-grained diagnoses require long, complex procedures. Drug treatments are not effective, and aphasia therapy largely relies on logopedics (neuromodulation techniques have been used recently, but with inconsistent results). With this respect, two types of difficulties must be faced. The first difficulty concerns specifying the content of treatment. To date, there are two extremes: pre-defined speech therapy programs, that neglect across-subject variability and therefore can be useless; and tailor-made programs, that require a long time to prepare, and can be used with a limited number of subjects. The second difficulty concerns access to treatment. Many aphasics suffer from motor deficits, and cannot travel to go to therapy. Up-to-date electronic tools (eg, dictionaries or repositories of common-sense knowledge) based on biologically viable constraints might be of great help for both diagnosis and treatment. They may speed up and simplify the preparation of individualized programs, and allow bringing treatment to the patient, thus removing the need for him/her to travel. In addition, and especially for subjects who suffer from "pure" disorders, limited to one input or output modality (eg, impaired comprehension of written but not spoken language, or vice versa; impaired writing with intact speech, or vice versa), augmentative communication could be the key to recovery toward a productive life. Data from aphasia are also used to understand language/brain relationships. Setting up international research consortia and and shared data banks would allow to store neuroimaging and behavioral data from different centers, and to collect more rapidly data for correlational studies on crucial issues (both language-independent and language-specific). |
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Prof. Bj�rn Granstr�m
KTH - Royal Institute of Technology
TMH - Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, Stockholm, Sweden
https://www.speech.kth.se/~bjorn/ |
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Prof. Bj�rn Granstr�m joined the department in 1969, after graduating as MSc in Electrical Engineering. After further studies in Phonetics and General Linguistics at Stockholm University he became Doctor of Science at KTH in 1977 with the thesis "Perception and Synthesis of Speech". In 1987 he replaced Gunnar Fant as Professor in Speech Communication. He has been the director of CTT, The Center for Speech Technology, since its start in 1996 |
Speech Technology Application: Application to Patient Rehabilitation
TBD |
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Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro
Professor of Osaka University
Dept. of Adaptive Machine Systems
Intelligent Robotics Laboratory
Dept. of Systems Innovation
Graduate School of Engineering Science
Visiting Group Leader
Dept. of Communication Robots
ATR Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories
Osaka University - Home Page
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Prof. Hiroshi Ishiguro (M�) received a D.Eng. in systems engineering from the Osaka University, Japan in 1991. He is currently Professor in the Graduate School of Engineering at Osaka University (2002�). He is also Visiting Group Leader (2002�) of the Intelligent Robotics and Communication Laboratories at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute, where he previously worked as Visiting Researcher (1999�2002). He was previously Research Associate (1992�1994) in thehttps://f="http://www.es.osaka-u.ac.jp/eng/index.html" target="_blank">Graduate School of Engineering Science athttps://f="http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/en" target="_blank">Osaka University and Associate Professor (1998�2000) in thttps://ref="http://www.soc.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/" target="_blank">Department of Social Informatics at Kyoto University. He was also Visiting Scholar (1998�1999) at thttps:// href="http://www.ucsd.edu/" target="_blank">University of California, San Diego, USA. He then became Associate Professor (2000�2001) and Professor (2001�2002https://e Department of Computer and Communication Sciences at Wakayama University.
His Research Areas are omnidirectional vision, distributed vision, sensor networks, humanoid robots, and android robots. In the last several years, he has mainly focused on development of humanoids and androids. For developing them, he is getting over 2 million dollars every year as research grants from Japanese government and private companies. The most successful robot he has made was exhibited in Nagoya World Expo 05, for which he is recognized as the father of the world first android. The activities have been introduced by almost all major TVs, such as BBC, and newspapers in the world. Recently, he has been selected as one of 100 geniuses alive in this world by Synectics (UK, 2007). |
Future Technology: From teleoperated androids to cellphones as surrogates
TBD |
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Sincerely,
Giuseppe Riccardi
Plenary/Keynote Chair
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