Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA)

The mission of the Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) is to support research and applications in all areas of voice communication, from understanding voice production and acoustics, cognition and neural processing of voices, to computer-based voice processing methods, for example through machine learning or artificial intelligence (AI). Applications of voice communication sciences are mainly found in areas such as automatic voice processing (e.g. voice recognition, voice synthesis), clinical areas (e.g. voice production disorders, hearing and perception problems in the context of vocal expressions) and forensic investigations, where the voice serves as evidence in police investigations and in the administration of justice (forensic voice sciences). The main activities of the association include: - The VoCSA Community: Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) consists of an international community of individuals, academic and industrial institutions interested in voice communication sciences and interested in networking across institutions and participating in joint events, initiatives and projects; - VoCSA Project Support: Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) brings members together and supports them in raising funds for activities in the network. One of the most important projects of Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) is the MSCA project VoCS. Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) plans to support members with seed capital so that they can apply for interdisciplinary project funding (subject to budget availability; see Article 6); - The VoCS Conference (Voice-ID): Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) organizes a conference for the community at least every two years to discuss important results and provide networking opportunities, particularly between science and industry. The basic idea of Voice-ID is to bring together researchers with different expertise from a broad spectrum of disciplines who deal with voice communication from different perspectives, with different methods, approaches and paradigms. Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) aims to make the conference as interdisciplinary as possible; - Publications: Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) aims to create useful publication initiatives/channels for the community. Such a publication channel could be an open-source journal, for example the Journal of Voice Communication Sciences (JVoCS). Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) will explore possibilities for how such a journal or other publication methods can be realized; - Training: Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) supports its members in organizing continuing education events such as summer schools, seminar or lecture series, or online events in the field of voice communication sciences. Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) supports such events with financial contributions (subject to budget availability; see Article 6); - Databases: Voice Communication Sciences Association (VoCSA) supports its members in making speech data accessible in open science repositories.