# International Speech Communication Association

The International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) is a non-profit organization and one of the two main professional associations for speech communication science and technology, the other association being the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

## Purpose

The purpose of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) is to promote the study and application of automatic speech processing, including speech recognition and synthesis, as well as related areas such as speaker recognition and speech compression. The association's activities cover all aspects of speech processing, including computational, linguistic, and theoretical aspects.
The primary goal of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA) is to advance the field of automatic speech processing and communication technology through research, education, and collaboration. By promoting the study and application of speech technologies such as speech recognition, speech synthesis, speaker recognition, and speech compression, ISCA aims to foster innovation and development in the areas of human-computer interaction, telecommunications, and multimedia applications.
ISCA serves as a platform for researchers, academics, industry professionals, and students to exchange knowledge, share best practices, and foster interdisciplinary dialogue in the field of speech communication science. Through conferences, workshops, publications, and educational initiatives, ISCA seeks to enhance the understanding of speech processing mechanisms, improve the accuracy and efficiency of speech technologies, and explore new frontiers in the realm of human language communication.
Furthermore, ISCA plays a crucial role in promoting international collaboration and networking among professionals in the speech communication community. By facilitating partnerships and cooperation between individuals and organizations worldwide, ISCA seeks to drive global progress in speech technology research and application, ultimately contributing to the advancement of communication systems, accessibility tools, and interactive interfaces that benefit society as a whole.

## Conferences

ISCA organizes yearly the INTERSPEECH conference.
Most recent INTERSPEECH:
* 2013 Lyon
* 2014 Singapore
* 2015 Dresden
* 2016 San Francisco
* 2017 Stockholm
* 2018 Hyderabad
* 2019 Graz
* 2020 Shanghai (fully virtual)
* 2021 Brno (hybrid)
* 2022 Incheon
* 2023 Dublin
Forthcoming INTERSPEECH:
* 2024 Kos Island
* 2025 Rotterdam

## ISCA board

The ISCA president for 2023-2025 is Odette Scharenborg. The vice president is Bhuvana Ramabhadran and the other members are professionals in the field.

## History of ISCA

The precursor to Interspeech was a conference called Eurospeech, first held in 1989 and organised by Jean-Pierre Tubach. It was the conference of the European Speech Communication Association (ESCA), itself the precursor of the International Speech Communication Association (ISCA). A year later another conference on speech science and technology was started: the International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP), which was founded in 1990 by Hiroya Fujisaki. The first ISCA (vs. ESCA) event was the merging of Eurospeech and ICSLP to create ICSLP-Interspeech, held in Beijing, China in 2000. This was followed by Eurospeech-Interspeech, which was held in Aalborg, Denmark in 2001. In 2007, the Eurospeech and ICSLP parts of the conference names were dropped and Interspeech became the name of the yearly conference (first Interspeech location: Antwerp, Belgium).