Edinburgh Speech Science and Technology

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Edinburgh Speech Science and Technology
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Overview

• What are Early Stage Training Programmes?
• EdSST the state of play

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Overview of EdSST

• Four-year EU Marie Curie Early Stage Training
  programme that offers exceptional funding for
  exceptional researchers
• Five long-term fellows, five short-term fellows
• Collaboration between University of Edinburgh
  (lead partner) and Queen Margaret University
  College

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Marie Curie Early Stage Training

• Aims to
• stimulate European Mobility
• foster cooperation between partners in consortium
  of host institutions
• encourage young researchers to pursue research
  projects in another country
• Provides exceptional funding for exceptional
  researchers

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Who can be a Fellow?

• Postgraduate researchers
• with less than four years research experience
  (industry experience does not count)
• who do not already hold a PhD
• who have been living in the host country for less
  than 12 out of the past 36
• Citizens of the host country can only apply if
  they have been living abroad for more than 48 of
  the past 60 months
• There is a quota on non-EU students

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What do Fellows Get?

• Monetary
• monthly living allowance (fixed depending on
  country)
• travel allowance (fixed)
• PhDs get career development allowance
• Training and Supervision

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Overview

• What are Early Stage Training Programmes?
• EdSST the state of play

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Edinburgh Speech Science and Technology

• 5 Long-Term Fellows (36 months, PhD at Edinburgh
  or QMUC) and 5 Short-Term Fellows (average stay
  of 6 months)
• Research Focus
• Articulatory instrumentation and modelling
• Speech synthesis
• Speech recognition
• Spoken Dialogue Systems
• Inclusive Design
• Augmentative and Alternative Communication

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Care and Nurturing of the Common Fellow

• Each fellow has two supervisors, one from QMUC
  and one from Edinburgh, and a mentor for pastoral
  care
• Fellows have two detailed personal plans that are
  reviewed periodically covering
• research project
• career and skills development

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Who are our Long-Term Fellows?

• Edinburgh
• Sebastian Andersson, Naturalness in Speech
  Synthesis
• Joao Cabral, Expressive Speech Synthesis
• Martin Tietze, Spoken Dialogue Systems for Older
  People
• Dong Wang, Speech Recognition
• QMUC
• Tanja Kocjancic, Ultrasound of dyspraxic speech

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Next Step Short-Term Fellows

• Two calls, one in October 2006 and one in October
  2007
• will conduct well-defined research project at
  CSTR and/or SSRC
• 4-12 months duration
• 3-7 Fellows
• Flyer for distribution

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Project Timeline

• Start January 1, 2006
• Call for Long-Term Fellows January 2006, closed
  March 31, 2006 for start in September 2007
• Calls for Short-Term Fellows in late 2006 and
  2007
• End December 31, 2009

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EdSST events

• Yearly workshops with presentations by fellows
  and guest speakers
• Weekly research seminars where students
• discuss their progress
• give talks
• present end-of-project reports