Newsletter – volume 2 – June 2018

Monica: MTR + E8: The Project Officer (PO) has agreed to hold the Mid-term Review (MTR) on 1st October 2018 in The Hague (The Netherlands) – well connected both from Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport (AMS) and Brussels (for the PO). The final dates for the whole E8, which will take place along with the MTR, are still to be defined. More information will be provided shortly.

Anna: From 21 to 23 May, I attended the AESoP Symposium in Leuven (https://gbiomed.kuleuven.be/english/research/50000666/50000672/Symposia/aesop). There were many great talks on signal processing and advancing EEG research on listening effort.

Chen and Esther: had the poster “Articulatory Control and Executive Control in Speech Production” accepted for the International Workshop on Language Production 2018 (IWLP: http://language-production.cnrs.fr/ ). The workshop will take place 2nd – 4th July, at Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen.

Gerard: is writing a paper about comparing the HMD and a curved screen for hearing impaired research in audiovisual listening tasks. The experiments with audiovisual realistic environments have been presented in ASA this month and the ACALES will be included in the ynh re-tests and in the experiments with elderly normal hearing.

Martin: , together with Maria Luisa Garcia Lecumberri, has just published an article in JASA showing that noise is no barrier to the acquisition of non-native sounds:https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.5035080

Olina: Since I was the first ESR to perform my secondment I would like to share my experience with you. One of the most important aspects of the secondment is to cover the needs that your host university cannot. In my case, I need machine learning knowledge which the university departments in Vitoria couldn’t provide me with. On the contrary, the University of Edinburgh is a proper place for this. I spent almost 4 months in Edinburgh and I had the opportunity to visit another laboratory (CSTR) and to have regularly meetings with Prof. Simon King. During my stay there I attended machine learning courses but I also ran experiments with native British English listeners, something that couldn’t have been done in my host university. Last but not least I had the chance to spend some time with Avashna and Carol. I definitely recommend you to have a secondment soon. I am looking forward to having my next one!

Olina: Recently Avashna and I attended the Google PhD speech summit at the Google offices in London. It was a unique experience. The tech talks centered mainly around TTS. We were introduced to the latest technologies such as Wavenets and Tacotron 2. Recent developments in ASR was also presented. In a round table setup with Googlers, we had fruitful discussions on more specific aspects involving acoustic modelling, ASR, the bridge between academia and industry and dialogue systems. Avashna and I presented posters and received meaningful feedback.

Valerie: was caught up in the Laurel/Yanny green needles/brainstorm media sensations and her commentary ended up in the Huffington Post (twice…) and many other websites, several newspapers (Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Express and many further regional papers in UK, El Pais in Spain) and via live radio interviews with the Irish national channel (RTE1) and BBC Radio London.

Patti: and her collaborator Harold Bekkering (Donders Institute) have recently received funding from the Leverhulme Trust to appoint a Research Associate (postdoc) for 36 months on the project “The Mechanisms Governing Imitation of Speech”, starting 1 September 2018 (start date flexible). We are seeking applications from qualified researchers who ideally have just finished their PhD (or are awaiting their viva). The project will include behavioural, fMRI and TMS experiments on imitation of speech actions. The details of the post can be found here:https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BJK308/research-associate

Inma: Ikerbasque have launched a new international call to reinforce research and scientific career in the Basque Country. Click here for more information:http://www.ikerbasque.net/

Sneha

1) When I was a teenager, unexposed to Europe, I thought tiramisu was a type of sushi

2) I have 3 uncles, 7 aunts and 20 first cousins. We can play a cricket match amongst ourselves.

3) During the second semester of my Master’s in Acoustics and music technology at Edinburgh, I was looking for a 10 credit course to complete the passing requirement of 60 credits. I was considering a course called innovation and management. But one of my professors suggested that I should probably take something useful, like Speech Synthesis. I was like…yeah why not. That led me to what I am doing today. Also, this professor was called Stefan BILBAO! Serendipity?

Katherine

1) I have lived more than half my life abroad, in 6 different countries, of which the smallest country, Andorra had a population of around 77,000 people.

2) I was a member of two human tower teams (colla castellera) and would climb more than 4 meters high.

3) I am 154cm, which is the average height of a 12 year old girl in the Netherlands, where I am currently living. I cannot see myself in my bathroom mirror.

Gerard

1) I was a camp leader for two summers in a music camp

2) I have 14 catalan surnames

3) ) I’ve always been afraid of spiders