Dear Auditory list, This is the final call for participation for the IEEE Signal Processing Cup to be held as part of ICASSP 2017 in New Orleans (March 5th - 9th). The IEEE Signal Processing Cup provides undergraduate students with an opportunity to form teams and work together to solve a challenging and interesting real-world program using signal processing techniques and methods. The topic of the SP CUP in 2017 is very relevant to those on the auditory list with an interest in music: Real-Time Beat Tracking. I would like to use this opportunity to reach out to faculty who are currently teaching audio, mir, or dsp classes to let their students know about the SP Cup. In addition to prize money for the best three teams: (grand prize $5000, second prize $2500 and third prize $1500) IEEE will also provide travel grants and free registration for up to three participants of the best three teams to attend ICASSP. The main page for the SP Cup is here: https://signalprocessingsociety.org/get-involved/signal-processing-cup A supporting document for the competition is here: http://signalprocessingsociety.org/sites/default/files/uploads/publications_resources/news/ICASSP_2017_SPCup.pdf Registered participants can access an online forum to post questions to the organisers: https://piazza.com/ieee_sps/other/sp1701/home Important Dates: November 7, 2016 - Deadline for Team Registration to join the competition and Phase 1 submission** December 21, 2016 - Deadline for submitting open competition results for Phase 2. January 10, 2017 - Announcement of best three teams. March 5-9, 2017 - Final Competition at ICASSP 2017 **While the deadline for participation and Phase 1 submission is coming very soon, there is a pretty low barrier for entry: Part 1 1. The submission of three 30 second musical excerpts along with human annotated beat times. (Note, we're partially bootstrapping the competition by having some of the test dataset provided by the teams themselves.) Part 2 1. Software version (with instructions on how to run the software) of the real- time algorithm implemented on the embedded device. 2. The beat time output for the real-time embedded algorithm for the both the provided database and the participant submitted musical excerpts. 3. A video or link to an online video of the real-time beat tracking application in action for an easy and hard musical excerpt. 4. A report in the form of an IEEE conference paper describing the technical details of the real-time beat tracking application. Any questions, do feel free to contact me directly, or via the forum on piazza. Best wishes on behalf of the IEEE SP Cup 2017 organisers, Craig Jin, Matthew Davies, Dan Ellis |