Corpora: Proposal solicitation: JHU CLSP Workshop 2001

[Amy Berdann]

Dear Colleague:

I am writing in connection with the summer workshop on Language Technology
we are preparing to host at the Johns Hopkins University in the summer of
2001.

You may already have a good idea about the nature of these summer workshops,
which we have hosted every year at Hopkins since 1995.  If not, I have
included a short summary description.  If you need additional information,
please feel free to ask me or visit our web pages at
http://www.clsp.jhu.edu.

These workshops have attempted to identify specific research topics
(suitable for a six week team exploration) on which progress is needed to
advance the state of the art in various fields of Language Technology (such
as ASR, text-to-speech, TDT, MT, information retrieval, summarization,
etc.).  The research topics of the participating teams in previous workshops
can serve as a good example (see below).  Having identified such topics in
an organizational conference (see below), we then attempt to get the best
researchers to work on them.  The purpose of this communication is to ask
you for help in identifying suitable topics.

Would you be interested and available to participate in the 2001 Summer
Workshop (July 9 - August 17, 2001)?  If so, we ask that you submit a
one-page research proposal for consideration.  It need only be a couple of
paragraphs detailing the problem and a rough agenda to be addressed by the
team in the 6-week period.  If your proposal is chosen (by an independent
review panel), we would invite you to join us for the Organizational
Conference at the Airlie Conference Center in Warrenton, Virginia, November
17-19, 2000 (as our guest), for further discussions aimed at consensus.  If,
at the organizational meeting, a topic in your area of interest is chosen as
one of the four to be pursued during the summer, we would expect you to be
available for participation (and perhaps team leadership) in the six week
workshop.  We are not asking for an ironclad commitment at this juncture,
just a good faith understanding that if a project in your area of interest
is chosen, you will take an active role in pursuing it.

We would like to receive proposals by September 29, 2000 so that we may
begin the review process.  They may be faxed (410-516-5050), sent via return
e-mail (berdann at jhu.edu) or via regular mail (CLSP, Johns Hopkins
University, 3400 N. Charles St., Barton 320, Baltimore, MD  21218).

Please let us know via return e-mail whether you are interested in
submitting a proposal.

Regards,

Frederick Jelinek, Director
Center for Language and Speech Processing
Johns Hopkins University



Information on Workshop 2001

The 6-week workshop at Johns Hopkins University on language engineering
brings together teams of leading professionals and students to advance the
state of the art.  The professionals would normally be university professors
and industrial and governmental researchers working in widely dispersed
locations.  The graduate students will be familiar with the field and will
be selected in accordance with their demonstrated performance.  The
undergraduates will be entering seniors who are new to the field and who
have shown outstanding academic promise.  They will be selected through a
national search.  Undergraduate participation began in 1998 with the intent
of  broadening the appeal of language engineering amongst students
considering graduate studies.

Proposals for research projects are being solicited from a wide range of
academic and government institutions, as well as from industry.  All
proposals will be reviewed by an independent panel.  Those chosen will be
presented at the Airlie conference to which both presenters and leading
researchers will be invited.  Out of these presentations and the discussion
which will follow, the four research topics for WS01 will emerge.

The primary goal of the workshop is to establish research directions and
educate students in language technology.  Additional expected benefits of
the workshop are the recruitment of students into language engineering
research; the creation, collection, and dissemination of tools and data for
language engineering research; and the establishment of fruitful and
long-lasting collaborations.

Workshop 2000 investigated four topics:  Pronunciation Modeling of Mandarin
Casual Speech, Mandarin English Information, Audio-Visual Speech Recognition
and Reading Comprehension.




      Amy Berdann                      410-516x4778
    Center Administrator                 berdann at jhu.edu
       320 Barton Hall                   http://www.clsp.jhu.edu
Center for Language and Speech Processing
    Johns Hopkins University