Connectionists: Postdoctoral Research fellow vacancy (10 July deadline) & invite to 1st AVSEC Challenge (part of IEEE SLT 2022)

[Amir Hussain]

Dear all:

Please see *two* key updates below on behalf of the UK EPSRC funded
COG-MHEAR research programme (http://cogmhear.org), and kindly help
circulate as appropriate - thank you very much in advance.

*(1) *COG-MHEAR is recruiting for a *postdoctoral research fellow* based at
Edinburgh Napier University - please see application details below.

COG-MHEAR Research Fellow post (for up to 30 months - closing date:  10th
 July 2022):
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CRB059/research-fellow-cog-mhear-full-time-up-to-30-months-fixed-term


*(2) * Invite to the *first COG-MHEAR Audio-visual Speech Enhancement
Challenge (AVSEC)* - http://challenge.cogmhear.org


Participants will work on a large dataset derived from TED talks to enhance
speech in extremely challenging noisy environments and with competing
speakers. The performance will be evaluated using human listening tests as
well as with objective measures. We hope that the Challenge will create a
benchmark for AVSEC research that will be useful for years to come. The
challenge data and development tools are now available - for details see
the challenge website: https://challenge.cogmhear.org/#/  and our github
repository: https://github.com/cogmhear/avse_challenge



AVSEC has been accepted as an official challenge at the *IEEE Spoken
Language Technology (SLT) Workshop* (https://slt2022.org/) to be held in
Doha, Qatar, 9-12 Jan 2023, where a special session will be run.



*Important Dates*

1st May 2022: Challenge website launch

31st May 2022: Release of the full toolset, training/development data and
baseline system

*1st June 2022: Registration for challenge entrants opens*

25th July 2022: Evaluation data released

1st Sept 2022: Submission deadline for evaluation (by objective and
subjective measures)

9th Jan 2023: Results announced at IEEE SLT 2022



*Background: *Human performance in everyday noisy situations is known to be
dependent upon both aural and visual senses that are contextually combined
by the brain’s multi-level integration strategies. The multimodal nature of
speech is well established, with listeners known to unconsciously lip-read
to improve the intelligibility of speech in a real noisy environment. It
has been shown that the visual aspect of speech has a potentially strong
impact on the ability of humans to focus their auditory attention on a
particular stimulus.



The aim of the first AVSEC is to bring together the wider computer vision,
hearing and speech research communities to explore novel approaches to
multimodal speech-in-noise processing. Both raw and pre-processed AV
datasets – derived from TED talk videos – will be made available to
participants for training and development of audio-visual models to perform
speech enhancement and speaker separation at SNR levels that will be
significantly more challenging than those typically used in audio-only
scenarios. Baseline neural network models and a training recipe will be
provided.



In addition to participation at IEEE SLT, Challenge participants will be
invited to contribute to a *Journal Special Issue* on the topic of
Audio-Visual Speech Enhancement that will be announced later this year.



*Registration/further information*: If you are interested in participating
and wish to receive further information, please sign up here:
https://challenge.cogmhear.org/#/getting-started/register



If you have questions, contact us directly at: cogmhear at napier.ac.uk



*Organising Team*:

Amir Hussain, Edinburgh Napier University, UK (co-Chair)

Peter Bell, University of Edinburgh, UK (co-Chair)

Mandar Gogate, Edinburgh Napier University, UK

Cassia Valentini Botinhao, University of Edinburgh, UK

Kia Dashtipour, Edinburgh Napier University, UK

Lorena Aldana, University of Edinburgh, UK



Evaluation Panel Chair: John Hansen, University of Texas in Dallas, USA

Scientific Committee Chair: Michael Akeroyd, University of Nottingham, UK

Industry co-ordinator: Peter Derleth, Sonova AG



Funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
programme grant: COG-MHEAR (http://cogmhear.org )



Supported by RNID (formerly Action on Hearing Loss), Deaf Scotland, Sonova
AG

We hope to see you soon.

Kindest regards

Amir
---
Professor Amir Hussain
Programme Director: EPSRC COG-MHEAR (http://cogmhear.org)
School of Computing, Engineering & Built Environment,
Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh EH10 5DT, Scotland, UK
E-mail: a.hussain at napier.ac.uk
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