Aix-Marseille University is the largest French-speaking university, with more than 80k students including 10k international students. AMU is home to 130 research facilities linked to France’s biggest research institutions (CNRS, INSERM, CEA…). AMU partners belong to team Neural Bases of Communication (BaNCo) of the Institute of Neurosciences in Timone medical school (INT). The INT is dedicated to the study of the structure and function of the central nervous system. Team BaNCo specializes in the neural and computational bases of voice perception in humans and animals, and its relation to social interactions.
Friedrich Schiller University Jena was founded in 1558 as one of the oldest universities in Germany and is member of the prestigious COIMBRA group. University of Jena is structured into ten faculties with more than 17.500 students and almost 10.000 employees. The university cooperates with more than 200 universities and research institutions in over 50 countries. The Institute of Psychology, our partner in VoCS, holds 14 departments and a rich and stimulating environment of research and teaching.
Maastricht University (UM) stands out for its innovative, problem-based learning education model, international character and multidisciplinary approach to research and education. The Basic and Applied NeuroDynamics Laboratory (BAND Lab) in the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience (FPN), uses behavioural, electrophysiological and brain imaging techniques to investigate time and rhythm perception and motor action in healthy and patient populations.
The University of Oslo, established in 1811, is the oldest and second largest university in Norway. UiO ranks 73rd in the Shanghai ranking (2023) and has received 5 Nobel laureates. The Department of Psychology was founded in 1909 and is the oldest psychology department in Norway. It has 1603 students, 192 PhD candidates and more than 200 people working at the department. The Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience group at UiO uses various neuroscience methods, including a 3T MR scanner and several EEG systems, to investigate brain mechanisms for voice signal decoding and affective voice communication in healthy participants and patient groups.
Université Jean Monnet is a member of the University Community of Lyon Saint-Étienne, an academic ensemble that ranks as the second largest research and training center in France, with a strong research focus and international presence. It has over 400 international cooperation agreements, promoting global knowledge-sharing. The ENES Bioacoustics Research Lab (www.ENESlab.com) operates under the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and is part of the renowned Center for Research in Neuroscience in Lyon (CRNL), boasting multi-disciplinary expertise in the cognitive and brain sciences.
Eötvös Loránd University is one of the oldest and largest universities in Hungary. According to global university rankings ELTE is one of the best public universities in Hungary, ranks among the top 5% higher education institutions worldwide. It collaborates with more than 500 Erasmus partner institutions and 150 further bilateral international partners. ELTE’s Department of Ethology has studied dog behavior, cognition and evolution for over two decades, has pioneered at developing a variety of new methodologies, and developed a conceptual basis and theoretical framework for interspecific voice perception research across species, and for dog-human comparative neuroscience of vocal social processes.
Universidad Pompeu Fabra was founded in 1990 by the Catalan government with two aims principal aims: to train professionals and citizens committed to civic values, and to foster outstanding research. It is one of the top universities in Europe and beyond, ranked 3rd in Spain and 86th in Europe by the Times Higher Education Ranking 2023. The quality of research can be seen in its success in attracting European funding in Horizon 2020 (85.6 million euros and 176 funded projects). UPF’s Faculty of Communication will be involved in VoCS.
Charles University in Prague is the largest university in the Czech Republic, established in 1348, with ca. 50,000 students. It is ranked as the top research university in the country. It is composed of 17 faculties of which the Faculty of Arts, where the doctoral student be hosted within the project, is the largest one. The Institute of Phonetics at the Faculty of Arts of CU is the only specialized phonetic laboratory in the Czech Republic. The hardware and software facilities offered by the Institute of Phonetics are sufficient and meet contemporary standards.
The University of Eastern Finland is the most multidisciplinary university and one of the largest ones in Finland with approximately 16,000 students and 3,200 members of staff. UEF offers teaching in nearly 100 major subjects in four faculties. UEF is presented by the School of Computing, whose focus areas include Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science. The Computational Speech Group is known for its work in speaker and language recognition; and as a pioneer in speech deepfake research. The group mixes research methodologies from computer science, machine learning, statistical modeling, signal processing, and speech sciences.
University College London (UCL) has a global reputation for excellence in research and is committed to delivering impact and innovations that enhance the lives of people in the UK, across Europe and around the world. UCL was identified by the UK Research Excellence Framework as the top university in the UK for research strength and UCL is consistently placed in the global top 20 across a wide range of university rankings (currently joint 8th in the QS World University Rankings). UCL’s total competitively awarded research income annually stands at an impressive € 530 million, of which 10% is European funded research & innovation. The research team has access to the BUCNI neuroimaging center (for vocal tract MRI) and all of the Chandler.
The University of Twente is a young, entrepreneurial research university where 3,900 employees conduct pioneering research, connecting technology, science and engineering with social sciences. Founded in 1961 in Enschede, UT has taken a top position in various global and national rankings. For instance, the Times Higher Education (THE) ranks it among the top 300 universities worldwide. All research and education are aimed at making a difference in today’s society while setting up the next generation for the future. The Human Media Interaction (HMI) group does research into multimodal interaction: from brain computer interfaces to social robots. It is a multidisciplinary group in which computer science meets social science to investigate and design and evaluate novel forms of human-computer interaction.
Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) is a ‘Russell Group’ UK university conducting the very best research and outstanding teaching and learning. It is ranked 7th for research quality in the 2021 UK Research Excellence Framework (REF). It is ranked 124th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (2023) and has 9 Nobel Prize winners. QMUL is a very diverse university, with over 33000 students and c. 5400 staff from over 170 nationalities, of which 41% are from overseas. 62 staff have been elected as academy and society fellows (e.g. Royal Society, British Academy, Medical Science and Engineering). QMUL was ranked 10th in UK and 19th in EU for number of H2020 MSCA-IF awarded.
audEERING’s activities in Digital Health AI cover the identification of vocal biomarkers for respiratory, motor, and cognitive diseases, as well as the development of robust Deep Learning models for clinical assessments. The working places are located in Gilching or Berlin.
Eriksholm Research Centre is an autonomous research entity within Oticon A/S (part of William Demant Holding), one of the world’s largest hearing aid manufacturers. Eriksholm’s mission is to make discoveries with the potential to provide significantly improved end-user benefits in future hearing care. The research focuses on three strategic areas: Personalised Audiology; Cognition & Listening Effort; Intent Controlled Hearing Technologies. The group comprises 25 researchers including 4 PhD students. Inspired by trends in Audiology, the multidisciplinary group includes engineers, psychologists, audiologists and behavioural scientists.
The University of Zürich is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland founded in 1833. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. The Department of Computational Linguistics hosts the research group Phonetics & Speech Sciences which comprises of +25 research in the area of phonetics and speech signal processing with a particular focus on voice sciences. The department also hosts the Centre of Forensic Phonetics and Acoustics which provides a platform for projects and education in the area of forensic voice analysis and has delivered expertise in numerous international high-profile court cases of the past years.
The University Of Augsburg founded in 1970, is a prestigious public institution in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany. Renowned for its interdisciplinary approach to education and research, the university offers a wide array of undergraduate and graduate programs in humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and engineering. A key research group within the university is the Chair of Embedded Intelligence for Health Care and Wellbeing (EIHW), which focuses on the development and application of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, particularly deep learning, to address critical challenges in healthcare and wellbeing. This group’s research endeavors have a significant impact on AI-driven solutions for disease diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation and health monitoring.
Oxford Wave Research is a dedicated research and development company specializing in audio and speech processing, voice biometrics, and deep-learning-related product development. The company has many years of experience developing solutions for forensic and law enforcement agencies in the UK, Europe, and around the world. It has been particularly successful in bringing practical applications of state-of-the-art academic research to commercial products in speaker recognition (VOCALISE), speaker diarisation (CLEAVER), biometric performance measurement (Bio-Metrics), as well as audio processing (MADCAT, Spectrumview, and others).
The National Institute of Informatics (NII) is a Japanese academic research institution for informatics leading frontier research on data science, big data, and artificial intelligence, supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan. NII is responsible for distributing various Japanese speech corpora to universities to improve research infrastructure in speech information processing. Research in the VoCS project will be performed by a research group working on speech/audio generation and synthetic media detection that comprises 1 faculty, 3 postdoctoral researchers and 3 Ph.D. students.
The Forensic Laboratory of National Bureau of Investigation carries out forensic analyses for the police and other authorities. The laboratory issues statements based on the analyses, which are used, for example, to advance investigations and in court. These statements have a direct impact on the legal rights of citizens and the lawfulness of society.
Odia is a company whose goal is to create a quality hearing experience. Using cutting-edge neural speech synthesis and generative artificial and generative artificial intelligence, we turn text into voice, so that everyone so that everyone can access the press. Our solution lets you instantly convert a wide range of written content written content – whether articles, books or even professional reports – into immersive, captivating audio narration. Our technology uses synthesized voices to give you the impression of listening toa real person. Our team is made up of experts in artificial intelligence and natural language processing.
Oticon Medical is a global company in implantable hearing solutions, dedicated to bringing
sound to people at every stage of life. Our headquarters at Oticon Medical have open office spaces, electronic and mechanic labs, server rooms, virtual reality/ acoustic room, prototyping facilities, meeting rooms, available for the research programmed in VoCS project.