Description

The Summer school will offer an immersive interdisciplinary training program into the diverse approaches, methods, and tools to study how identity is encoded in human and animal vocalization, how it is processed behaviorally, cognitively, and automatically, how it can be acoustically modeled and artificially synthesized. It is organized by experts in human and animal vocalizations at the University of Zurich, in collaboration with an international network of collaborators in academia and industry. The Summer School is funded by the Graduate School of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Topic

The main themes covered during the Summer School are:

• Vocal Identity in Acoustics and Articulation

• Vocal Identity Manipulation and Synthesis

• Vocal Identity Perception by Humans and Machines

• Vocal Identity in Animal Communication

• Physiological Processing of Vocal Identity in the Brain and through the Eyes

Structure

The program includes lectures from local and international experts in Acoustic and Articulation, Psychology, Neurosciences, Engineering, Biology, Anthropology etc. who will showcase different methods for researching vocal identity and recognition. Each lecture will be followed by hands-on training sessions at the LiRI Lab of Zurich University in which students will be shown how to use several phonetic psycho- and neuro-linguistic data acquisition units (e.g., recording cabins, EEG, Electromagnetic Articulography, Eye-tracking). Tutorial sessions are also planned where students will be presented with software and specific analytical procedures for existing data frames. To  General Program

Dates and Duration

4-13 September 2023 (Saturday included).

Venues

The Summer School will be held at the University of Zurich (Andreasstrasse 15, 8050 Zurich). The theoretical and tutorial sessions will take place in various rooms (AND 4.55-4.57, AND 3.06), and the Lab sessions at the LiRI Lab (room AND -1.77). A session at the ZOO in Zurich is planned for Saturday 9 September.

Participants

The Summer School is primarily addressed to Ph.D. students of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Zurich University. For its high interdisciplinary profile, the program is compatible with doctoral students from Universities and Applied Universities in Computational Linguistics and Phonetics, Psychology, Linguistics and Computer Sciences, Biology, and Anthropology. The Summer School is also open to any researchers who already work in the field of vocal individuality and recognition and search for additional guidance or input to novel research methods. It is also addressed to professionals in performance arts, rehabilitation, speech technology, and communication industry, etc.

Max number of participants

15 max with MA as the minimum education level. A minimum of 8 places is reserved for the Ph.D. students of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Zurich University). To Registration

Organizers

Elisa Pellegrino (also contact person), Volker Dellwo, and Simon Townsend.