News

• Professor Ronald A. Cole will be visiting CSLP next week. There are still empty slots in his schedule so if you would like to meet him, please contact Dawid Pietrala or CSLP.
• We have the pleasure to announce that the Centre for Speech and Language Processing at the Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland is organising an international conference on speech and gesture in interaction GESPIN 2009. More details available here.
• Professor Ronald A. Cole will be visiting AMU School of English and CSLP between 20 and 31 of May. There are still empty slots in his schedule so if you would like to meet him, please contact CSLP.
• AMU School of English and Center for Speech and Language Processing invite you to a lecture by Prof. Dafydd Gibbon (Universität Bielefeld). Details here.
• Professor Ronald A. Cole will be visiting CSLP next week. There are still empty slots in his schedule so if you would like to meet him, please contact CSLP.
• Professor Ronald A. Cole was given a Fulbright grant for Senior Specialist and will visit CSLP for two weeks in May 2008
• December 14, 2007: mgr Dawid Pietrala gave a talk Polish-English Literacy Tutor – an advanced system for detecting pronunciation errors in the English spoken by Poles during a Conference for Managers of Grants sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education in Zakopane. The conference was organised by The Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Gliwice
• September 17, 2007: Prof. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk and Prof. Ronald A. Cole visited The International Center of Hearing and Speech in Kajetany and discussed possible ways of cooperation between CSLP, The International Center of Hearing and Speech and MentorMachines Inc.
• April 25, 2007: CSLP organised a lecture Progress inventing virtual humans that teach and conduct therapy. The lecture was given by Prof. Ronald A. Cole
• January 8, 2007: Lecture by prof. Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk at The International Center of Hearing and Speech in Kajetany near Warsaw on Virtual Tutors and Therapists: an overview of the projects underway in The Center for Speech and Language Processing at the School of English AMU, Poznan in cooperation with the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA (download the presentation in Polish - PDF 1.41MB)
• July 2006: CSLP received funding from the Polish Ministry of Scientific Research and Information Technology in support of the project on Automatic Detection of Pronunciation Errors in English spoken by Polish learners.
The project aims at compiling a database of spoken English produced by several hundreds of Polish learners of English. Based on this database and the SONIC speech recognition system created at CSLR, project authors intend indend to develop methods for automatic detection of pronunciation errors typical of Polish learners of English. The project deadline is August 2007.

Polish LSVTVT Project News

• During the conference Poznań Linguistic Meeting 2006, Prof. Lorraine Olsen Ramig from the University of Colorado, Boulder gave a talk entitled The science and practice of LOUD: voice treatment for Parkinson Disease.
• Prof. Ron Cole from the University of Colorado, Boulder presented PLM Progress Report 4: Inventing Virtual Humans that Teach and Conduct Therapy in which he described software programmes that were created as a result of collaboration between the Center for Language and Speech Research (Colorado) and The Center for Speech and Language Processing (Poznań).
• 22.04.2006 Prof. Lorraine Ramig conducted a workshop Essential elements of LSVT/LOUD for Parkinson disease and other neurological disorders for Polish speech therapists. She explained the principles and efficacy of LSVT treatment.
• At the beginning of July 2006, 6 Polish speech-language pathologists involved in the Polish LSVTVT project went to London to participate in the LSVT workshop. It was a two-day program designed to teach speech-language pathologists a voice/speech treatment technique for adults and children with motor speech disorders, with a specialty in Parkinson disease. Additionally, application of the LSVT to pediatric and adult motor speech disorders (e.g., multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, stroke) and aging was discussed.  The impact of LSVT on swallowing and pre-/post- LSVT PET scan findings was also presented. The speech therapists who attended the workshop received certification in the LSVT. They have been enrolled  in the database of LSVT certified clinicians for patient and physician referrals. Below is the list of Polish LSVTVT project participants who received LSVT certification:

1.    Dr Anna Pufal- Rehabilitation Clinic, Bydgoszcz
2.    Dr Iwona Kamińska- School of Medicine, Poznań
3.    mgr Żebryk-Stopa- School of Medicine, Poznań
4.    mgr Anna Dąbrowska- School of Medicine, Szczecin
5.    mgr Lachota- Rehabilitation Clinic, Wałbrzych
6.    mgr Monika Połczyńska-Fiszer, School of English UAM, Poznań


• The lectures, as well as the workshops, were partially financed thanks to the joint grant received by the Center for Speech and Language Processing UAM and the School of Medicine (AM), Poznań, as a part of the Polish LSVTVT project. The heads of the project are Prof. Katarzyna Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (IFA UAM) and Prof. Antoni Pruszewicz (AM).