Farewell Letter From the Outgoing SLTC Chair

Dear SLTC,

It has been an honor serving the speech and language community with all of you. I want to thank all current and past members of the SLTC for giving me two of the most rewarding years of my life. We have accomplished a number of things in these two years: increased the interest of speech and language processing in the broader signal processing and machine learning communities, produced visibility videos for our TC (check it out!), established liaisons with non-IEEE communities (ISCA, ACL) and nominated members from our community for IEEE awards and roles.  Thank you for playing an active role in these activities, while continuing to organize the technical program for ICASSP, seeking new members for our TC, and helping shape ASRU and SLT workshops.

With this progress, there is still much to be done. To name one, we have had several discussions to improve the review process for ICASSP and workshops, which we hope to jointly resolve with the SPS Conference Board.  With this and many more tasks at hand, it brings me satisfaction to know that the community is in good hands with the new chair. Please join me in welcoming Michiel Bacchiani as he takes over as the new chair. Michiel as Vice-Chair has already played a key role in shaping the technical program for ICASSP, while transitioning into his new role. I ask that you continue to extend the same level of support to Michiel as our TC continues to grow and stay as one of the largest and most successful areas of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.  

I would particularly like to thank two community-facing committees: the SLTC newsletter committee (formerly led by Florian Metze and now by Izhak Shafran), and the SLTC elections sub-committee (formerly led by Larry Heck and now by Andreas Stolcke) for their excellent and hard work in ensuring smooth operations year after year.

I especially want to thank Doug O’ Shaughnessy for his mentorship and support during my tenure, and I look forward to working with Michiel to continue to advance our speech and language agenda.

Looking forward to continuing my service and support to all of you in the coming years.

Best wishes,

Bhuvana Ramabhadran