HOARSE: Research Opportunities in Speech and Hearing

[Phil Green <P.Green@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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        *                    HOARSE IHP NETWORK                      *
        *  Hearing, Organisation And Recognition of Speech in Europe *
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            * POST DOCTORAL AND DOCTORAL RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES *
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HOARSE is a research training network funded by the EU 5th framework
Improving Human Potential programme from 1st September 2002 for 4 years. HOARSE
will employ both postgraduate (i.e. Ph.D. students) and postdoctoral
researchers.

The scientific objectives of HOARSE are to gain a better understanding of speech
production and hearing and to use this understanding to explain the perceptual
organisation of sound and improve speech technology. The project has five
inter-related themes:

* How are sound mixtures perceptually organised, and how can this Auditory Scene
Analysis be used in speech recognition?
* How does the Auditory System handle reverberant conditions, and how can models
of this processing be used for speech enhancement?
* How is speech production related to speech perception and cerebral speech
processing, and how can this knowledge be integrated into speech recognition
systems?
* How can Automatic Speech Recognition algorithms take advantage of the work in
Themes 1 and 2, for use in natural listening conditions?
* How can the results of other themes be exploited in speech recognition
applications which require robust performance  in adverse conditions and/or
processing of sound mixtures?

HOARSE research is multidisciplinary and a background in Acoustics, Audition,
Signal Processing, Phonetics, Linguistics, Computer Science or Mathematics
may be suitable.

The HOARSE partners are

Speech and Hearing Research Group, Department of Computer Science, University of
Sheffield, GB (coordinator).
Ruhr Universitat Bochum, DE
Daimler-Chrysler Research, Ulm, DE
Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing, Helsinki University of
Technology, FIN
IDIAP, Martigny, CH
University of Keele, GB
Wire Communication Lab, University of Patras, GR.

For more details, see http://www.hoarsenet.org

* By the IHP eligibility rules, SPHEAR researchers must
     be under 35 years of age,
     be EU citizens and
     be prepared to work outside their own country.

* Research students who have already commenced their doctoral studies may spend
part of their time on placements within HOARSE.

* Research students will have their tuition fees paid by the network.

* Payment will be based on the Marie Curie TMR fellowship rates (details from
the web site)

If you are interested, send your CV and the names and addresses of two referees
to the HOARSE coordinator (Phil Green), preferably by e-mail. Indicate what
interests you, and when you expect to be available.

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Professor Phil Green
HOARSE Coordinator
Speech and Hearing Research Group
Department of Computer Science
University of Sheffield
Regent Court
211 Portobello St.,
Sheffield S1 4DP
UK

phone: (44) 114 22 21828
fax:   (44) 114 22 21810
email: p.green@dcs.shef.ac.uk
www:   http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/people/P.Green/
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