Call for papers  

3^rd Advanced Voice Function Assessment International Workshop (AVFA2009)

Madrid (Spain), 18^th - 20^th May 2009

http://www.avfa09.upm.es

     This is the first Call for Papers and Posters for the 3rd Advanced Voice Function Assessment International Workshop (AVFA2009) that will be held from May 18^th to 20^th at the Universidad Politécncia de Madrid, Spain.

Motivation

    Speech is the most important means of communication among humans, resulting from a complex interaction among vocal folds vibration at the larynx and voluntary movements of the articulators (i.e., mouth, tongue, velum, jaw, etc.). The function of voice, however, is not limited to speech communication. It also transfers emotions, expresses personality features and reflects situations of stress or pathology. Moreover, it has an aesthetic value in many different professional activities, affecting salesmen, managers, lawyers, singers, actors, etc.

     Although research in speech science has traditionally favoured areas such as synthesis, recognition or speaker verification, the previous facts motivate the current emerging of a new research area related to voice function assessment.

     AVFA2009 aims at fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and interactions among researchers in voice assessment beyond the framework of COST Action 2103, thus reaching the whole scientific community.

Topics

     Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 

• Automatic detection of voice disorders
• Automatic assessment & rating of voice quality
• New strategies for parameterization and modelling normal and pathological voices (biomechanical-based parameters, chaos modelling, etc.)
• Databases of vocal disorders
• Inverse filtering
• Signal processing for remote diagnosis
• Speech enhancement for pathological & oesophageal voices
• Objective parameters extraction from vocal fold images using videolaryngoscopy, videokymography, fMRI and other emerging techniques
• Multi-modal analysis of disordered speech
• Robust pitch extraction algorithms for pathological & oesophageal voices
• Emotions in speech
• Speaker adaptation
• Voice Physiology and Biomechanics
• Modelling of Voice Production
• Diagnosis and Evaluation Protocols
• Substitution Voices
• Evaluation of Clinical Treatments
• Analysis of Oesophageal Voices

Submission

    Prospective authors are asked to electronically submit preliminary version of full papers with a maximum length of 4 pages, including figures and tables, in English. Preliminary papers should be submitted as pdf documents, fitted to the linked  template, by the 15^th of January. The submitted documents should include the title and authors' names, affiliations and addresses. In addition, the e-mail address and phone number of the corresponding author should be given. 

    Workshop proceedings will be edited both in paper and CD-ROM. Author registration to the conference is required for accepted papers to be included in the proceedings. The best papers presented at the workshop will be eligible for publication in a referred journal.

Best student paper award

Based on the comments given by the reviewers and the presentation at the conference, the organizing committee will give a best student paper award. The awarded author will be nominated at the closing ceremony of AVFA2009.

Schedule

·        Proposal due 15th January 2009

·        Notification of acceptance 15th February 2009

·        Final papers due 28th February 2009

·        Preliminary program 1st May 2009

·        Workshop 18th May – 20th May 2009

Registration and Information

Registration will be handled via the AVFA2009 web site (http://www.avfa09.upm.es). Please contact the secretariat (avfa09@ics.upm.es) for further information.

Program Committee

• Juan Ignacio Godino Llorente, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Co-Chair
• Pedro Gómez Vilda, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Co-Chair
• Rubén Fraile, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Scientific Secretariat
• Bartolomé Scola Yurrita, Gregorio Marañón Hospital 

·         Phillippe H. Dejonckere, University Medical Center Utrecht

·         Yannis Stylianou, University of Crete

Scientific Committee

• Markus GUGATSCHKA, Austria
• Martin HAGMUELLER,  Austria
• Jean SCHOENTGEN,  Belgium
• Thierry DUTOIT, Belgium
• Mieke MOERMAN, Belgium
• Jaromir HORACEK, Czech Republic
• Niels RASMUSSEN, Denmark
• Mette F. PEDERSEN, Denmark
• Laura LEHTO, Finland
• Paavo ALKU, Finland
• Anne-Maria LAUKKANEN, Finland
• Olivier ROSEC, France
• Antoine GIOVANNI, France
• Katrin NEUMANN, Germany
• Malte KOB, Germany
• Ioanis BIZAKIS, Greece
• Peter MURPHY, Ireland
• Ailbhe NICHASAIDE, Ireland 
• Christer GOHL, Ireland 
• John FENTON, Ireland 
• Richard REILLY, Ireland 
• Claudia MANFREDI, Italy
• Irma VERDONCK , Netherlands
• Luis CALDAS DE OLIVEIRA, Portugal
• Jerneja ZGANEC GROS, Slovenia
• Bojan PETEK, Slovenia
• Sten TERNSTRöM, Sweden
• Maria SöDERSTEN, Sweden
• David M. HOWARD, UK
• Adrian FOURCIN, UK 
• Eric GOODYER, UK 
• Julian MCGLASHAN, UK

Local Organizing Committee

• Nicolás Sáenz Lechón, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• Víctor Osma Ruíz, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• Juan Mª Gutiérrez Arriola, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• David Osés del Campo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• Rafael Martínez Olalla, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• Roberto Fernández Baillo, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• Begoña García Zapirain, Universidad de Deusto
• Carlos Ramírez Calvo, Gregorio Marañón Hospital

Sponsors

The conference is supported by the following organizations and/or institutions:  

• COST 2103 action
• Spanish Ministry of Research and Innovation (MCeI), RTD National Plan, Special Actions public Call.
• Thematic Network on Speech Technologies (RTH). This Thematic Network, funded itself through the RTD Spanish National Plan.
• Spanish society of ENT Physicians (SEORL)
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Special Actions Call.
• Dept. of Circuits and Systems Engineering (ICS)