HCSNet Update Newsletter Volume 3 Number 12

Tuesday, 27th March 2007
HCSNet Update
Tuesday 27 March 2007

Lab Spotlight

Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, University of Sydney

Simon Carlile directs a multi-disciplinary research group aimed at understanding the mechanisms underlying our perceptions of auditory space. Research projects involve bioacoustics, neural coding, behavioural/psychophysical studies, computer simulations and digital signal processing.

Areas of current research include the bioacoustics and psychophysics of our perception of spatial location including the influence of head movements and the integration of auditory and visual information on the perception of auditory space. One aspect of this research is aimed at providing answers to the so called “cocktail party” problem. That is, how are we able to hear out a talker of interest from the babble of background noise. While this is a significant signal processing problem by the central nervous system, most of us are able to do this with apparently little effort. However, for someone with even mild hearing loss their ability to carry out this processing becomes seriously impaired. Even with the most advanced hearing aids, the hearing impaired is still unable to effectively participate in conversations involving a number of talkers. This is a fundamental failing of current hearing aids as the wearer expects that they will assist in this essential everyday activity. One outcome of this research program has been the development of the world’s first Spatial Hearing Aid that supports effective listening in everyday environments. This was a combined effort with audio researchers in Electrical and Information Engineering. The solution involved combining a deep understanding of the bioacoustic cues and neurophysiological processing by the auditory system to solve the cocktail problem with advanced digital signal processing techniques using in modern digital hearing aids. These technologies have now been patented and assigned into a University of Sydney spin-off company, VAST Audio Pty Ltd.

Details:
Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory
University of Sydney
Contact: Associate Professor Simon Carlile (simonc@physiol.usyd.edu.au)     
www: www.physiol.usyd.edu.au/research/labs/auditory/

News

Inaugural HCSNet Awards 2007

HCSNet is pleased to invite applications for the HCSNet Graduate Student Placement Award and the HCSNet Early Career Researcher Placement Award in 2007. The Awards provide financial support for a Higher Degree Research Student and Early Career Researcher to spend a block of time (two weeks or longer) at another participating Research Laboratory, Centre, Group, Department or Industry Facility in Australia. The proposed visit should be designed to enhance knowledge or a skills base, build professional networks, and provide an opportunity to collaborate with experts in the field. Financial support from HCSNet is up to $2,500 to each award winner plus $500 to each host institution to assist with local expenses. Award winners will also receive a certificate and may be invited to present a keynote address at SummerFest. Applications will be assessed on merit by the HCSNet Executive and a nominated assessor relevant to the proposal. Closing date for applications: 25 May 2007; for further information, including eligibility, assessment criteria and application forms, please see Student Placement Award and ECR Placement Award. See this week's spotlight for one of our participating laboratories.

HCSNet Participant Profiles

We've been in touch with many participants over the last year to request that profiles be checked prior to "spotlighting" in the member spotlight feature of the HCSNet Newsletter. Thanks for all your responses! Now we're making a general request to all HCSNet participants to visit and update their profiles to provide some data we intend to use to link researchers together. We've made some recent changes to profile information, including the addition of new fields for primary research area, keywords and recent or representative publications as we hope to be able to offer innovative mechanisms for connecting researchers in the future. We'd also like you to indicate which Priority Research Areas are of most interest to you so that we can keep you informed about PA events and activities. We'd be grateful if you could visit the HCSNet website at http://www.hcsnet.edu.au, check that all your details are up-to-date (including attendance at HCSNet events) and if you haven't already included a photo, please consider adding one. Thank you!

Upcoming Submission Deadlines

We list here upcoming submission deadlines that fall in the next month. A more complete list of submission deadlines can be found here. Please note that any enquiries regarding these events should be directed to the event organisers, typically identified on the event's website which you can reach from the link below.

Machine learning and Cognitive Science in Language Acquisition

London, United Kingdom
Due date: 30 Mar 2007
URL: http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/home/alexc/coglang/index.html

Track I of the Web Spam Challenge 2007

Banff, Alberta, Canada
Due date: 30 Mar 2007
URL: http://webspam.lip6.fr/

CITALA-07 International Colloquium on Arabic Language Processing

Rabat, Morocco
Due date: 30 Mar 2007
URL: http://www.iera.ac.ma/iera/CITALA07/index.htm

CTF07 Concept Types & Frames in Language: Cognition & Science

Duesseldorf, Germany
Due date: 31 Mar 2007
URL: http://phil-fak.uni-duesseldorf.de/fff/ctf/

IPT - EGVE 2007 13th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments

Weimar, Germany
Due date: 31 Mar 2007
URL: http://www.uni-weimar.de/medien/vr/ipt-egve

ADS at the MMLA American Dialect Society at the MMLA

Ohio, United States
Due date: 1 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.uiowa.edu/~mmla

19th International Congress on Acoustics

Madrid, Spain
Due date: 1 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.ica2007madrid.org

ACL 2007 SECOND WORKSHOP ON STATISTICAL MACHINE TRANSLATION

Prague, Czech Republic
Due date: 2 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.statmt.org/wmt07/

The 26th International Conference on Lexis and Grammar

Corsica, France
Due date: 8 Apr 2007
URL: http://infolingu.univ-mlv.fr/Colloques/Bonifacio/index.html

An International Conference on TEXT, SPEECH and DIALOGUE

Plzeò (Pilsen), Czech Republic
Due date: 8 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.tsdconference.org/tsd2007

CLT07 Conference on Language and Technology

Peshawar, Pakistan
Due date: 9 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.dcs.edu.pk/clt/

5th International Conference on Language Acquisition

University of Oviedo, Spain
Due date: 10 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.aeal.eu/

TIR-07 4th International Workshop on Text-Based Information Retrieval

Regensburg, Germany
Due date: 12 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.aisearch.de/tir-07

IVA'07 7th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents

Paris, France
Due date: 15 Apr 2007
URL: http://iva07.ntua.gr

SoA8 8th Science of Aphasia Conference

Monopoli (Bari), Italy
Due date: 15 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.soa-online.com

ICPhS 2007 Satellite Workshop on Speaker Age

Saarbrücken, Germany
Due date: 15 Apr 2007
URL: http://w5.cs.uni-sb.de/~cmueller/sa/

MT SUMMIT XI

Copenhagen, Denmark
Due date: 15 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.eamt.org

ParaLing'07 Paralinguistic Speech - Between Models and Data

Saarbrücken, Germany
Due date: 15 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.dfki.de/paraling07

GREC 2007 Seventh IAPR International Workshop on Graphics Recognition

Curitiba, Brazil
Due date: 16 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.cvc.uab.es/iapr-tc10/grec2007/

Pacling-2007 Conference of the Pacific Association for Computational Linguistics

Melbourne, Australia
Due date: 16 Apr 2007
URL: http://mandrake.csse.unimelb.edu.au/pacling2007/

Upcoming Conferences

We list here upcoming conferences and workshops that fall in the next month. A more complete list of events can be found here. Please note that any enquiries regarding these events should be directed to the event organisers, typically identified on the event's website which you can reach from the link below.

DAARC'2007 The 6th Discourse Anaphora and Anaphor Resolution Colloquium

Lagos, Portugal
Date: 29 Mar 2007
to 30 Mar 2007 URL: http://daarc2007.di.fc.ul.pt/

UNTELE The Use of New Technologies in Foreign Language Teaching

Compiegne, France
Date: 29 Mar 2007
to 31 Mar 2007 URL: http://www.utc.fr/~untele

ILA International Linguistic Association

New York, United States
Date: 30 Mar 2007
to 1 Apr 2007 URL: http://www.ilaword.org

The Intelligibility of Closely Related Languages

Groningen, Netherlands
Date: 2 Apr 2007
to 3 Apr 2007 URL: http://www.let.rug.nl/~gooskens/intelligibility

Speech Prosody in Atypical Populations

University of Reading, United Kingdom
Date: 2 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/epu/cls_event.htm

Symposium: Spatial Reasoning and Communication

Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Date: 2 Apr 2007
to 5 Apr 2007 URL: http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb07/

Workshop on Ontologies and Semantic Lexica in Automated Discourse Analysis

Tübingen, Germany
Date: 11 Apr 2007
to 13 Apr 2007 URL: http://ariadne.coli.uni-bielefeld.de/mehler/ontologies/

CELCNA Conference on the Endangered Languages and Cultures of Native America

Salt Lake City, UT, United States
Date: 13 Apr 2007
to 15 Apr 2007 URL: http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.html

IWGE International Workshop on Grammar & Evidence

Chiayi, Taiwan
Date: 13 Apr 2007
to 15 Apr 2007 URL: http://www.ccunix.ccu.edu.tw/~lngproc/IWGE.htm

IMCL Language Learning with Personal Technologies

Amman, Jordan
Date: 17 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.imcl-conference.org/

NAACL HLT 2007 Human Language Technologies: The Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics

New York, United States
Date: 22 Apr 2007
to 28 Apr 2007 URL: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/meetings/hlt-naacl07

Doctoral Consortium at NAACL HLT 2007

Rochester, NY, United States
Date: 22 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.cs.rochester.edu/meetings/hlt-naacl07/dc/

HLT/NAACL 2007 Computational Approaches to Figurative Language

Rochester, NY, United States
Date: 26 Apr 2007
URL: http://chss3.montclair.edu/linguistics/lingpage/faculty/feldman/FigLang2007

NAACL/HLT 2007 Workshop Graph-based Methods for Natural Language Processing

Rochester, NY, United States
Date: 26 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.textgraphs.org/ws07

HLT/NAACL 2007 Confidence Estimation for Natural Language Processing

Rochester, New York, United States
Date: 26 Apr 2007
URL: http://cenlp.iltevents.org/

NAACL HLT 2007 SYNTAX AND STRUCTURE IN STATISTICAL TRANSLATION

Rochester, New York, United States
Date: 26 Apr 2007
URL: http://www.cs.ust.hk/~dekai/ssst/
HCSNet Update is a weekly electronic publication of HCSNet, the ARC Research Network in Human Communication Science, and is emailed to all Network participants. If you have received this newsletter by some other means, or you'd like to find out more about HCSNet, visit our website at www.hcsnet.edu.au. For enquiries about this newsletter or to stop receiving it, please email newsletter@hcsnet.edu.au.