The Training

The VoCS project aims to create an attractive research training programme at the European level. It is is centred on Career Development Plans (CDP) tailored to each DC’s skills, needs, and aspirations. The CDP will include secondments, local, network-wide, and international training, communication plan, and potential career paths. 

The VoCS consortium identified 4 main training objectives:

1) Attract and hire 19 excellent DCs in high-level research institutions and companies across Europe and guide them through their CDP through mentoring by distinguished scientists and industrial innovators.

2) Provide multidisciplinary scientific training at the highest level in Voice Communication Sciences, developing new methodologies and tools to analyse and process voice signals by integrating different challenging research environments ranging across sectors, from fundamental research to demonstration cases towards industrial applications and future developments.

3) Strengthen scientific leadership and secure the career prospects of DCs by offering soft skills such as ethics, communication skills, management capabilities, understanding of entrepreneurship as well as Open Science and the gender dimension through local and tailor-made network-wide training sessions on transferable skills.

4) Boost scientific and technical excellence far beyond the state-of-the-art by developing 17 outstanding individual research projects to be interconnected as interdisciplinary training through research.

Main Network-Wide Training Events, Conferences and Contribution of Beneficiaries

1 Day Meeting:Overview; Recruitment Process; Personalized Career Development Plan, Financial Management, Dissemination and Exploitation Strategy; Training on supervision for supervisors (common and practices- focus on juniors including mentoring).

Day 1:Introduction to the VoCS Doctoral Network; Career Development Plan (P. Belin, AMU). Team Building in the snow (DCs) Day 2: (STK) Fundaments of Vocal Acoustics in humans and animals (A. Andics, ELTE; S. Townsend, V. Dellwo, E. Pellegrino, UZH) (TS) Ethics of Human and Animal research, Integrity, Sustainability (K. Truong, U Twente; A. Andics, U., ELTE, tbc/ S. Townsend, M. Röthlisberger, UZH). Day 3: (STK) Feature extraction and acoustic modelling (V. Dellwo, A. De Luca, UZH); OpenSmile for Vocal Biomarker Extraction (U. Reichel, AUD). (TS): Open access and FAIR data principles (M. Röthlisberger, UZH). Day 4: (STK) Introduction to machine learning and automatic voice processing (Huw Swanborough, UZH; F. Kelly, OWR); (TS): Privacy and personal data (GDPR) (M. Röthlisberger, UZH). Day 5: (no DCs) Review / Consortium/EAB meetings.

Day 1: (STK) Specific disorders in voice perception and production (O. Guntinas-Lichuis, FSU); Team building: Autumn hike around Jena; BBQ Reception coinciding with launch of Center for Intervention and Research on adaptive and maladaptive brain Circuits underlying mental health (https://c-i-r-c.de/). Day 2: (STK) Voice and Health I. The voice and depression/suicidality (C. Dobel, FSUJ), Voice and autism (A. Kowallik, FSUJ), Voice and Parkinson´s disease (S. Kotz, UM); (TS) Diversity in scientific research: Ethnicity, Gender, Socio-economic awareness, Harassment (S Lipinski, Berlin; A. Führer, Halle). Day 3:(STK)Voice and health II. Respiratory disease (A. Batliner, UAU), Pathological voices and hearing loss (M. Huber, Salzburg), Perceptual voice trainings (S. Schweinberger, FSUJ). (TS) State-of-the-art in participatory research (H. Kreysa, FSUJ; C. Anderson, London; P. Mitchell, Bradford; S. Lipinski, Berlin). Day 4: (TS) Mental health in research (Graduate academy and Mental health First Aid Team, Jena); (STK) Voice analysis and modification (C. Nussbaum, FSUJ; P. Belin, AMU). Day 5: (no DCs) Review meeting / Consortium/EAB meeting. 

Day 1: (TS) Workshop: personal profiling, feedback management and communication training (DCs, HR Business Partner Rikke Gundborg, OTIERH); Team Building: Murder mystery. Day 2: (TS) Recruitment seen from the corporate side: How to search for jobs, what is important to recruiters, and how to write cover letters/CV (J. Schacht, H. Jensen, OTIERH). (STK) Audio Signal Processing for speech processing and speech enhancement (T. Alstrøm, Tech Uni Denmark; P. Messiano, L. Bramsløw, N. Pontoppidan, OTIERH). Day 3:(STK) Machine Learning for Signal Processing (T. Alstrøm, Tech Uni Denmark). (TS) Real-world assessment of hearing and communication performance (S. Aliakbary-Hosseinabadi, J. H. Christensen, D. Wendt, OTIERH). Day 4:(TS) Project and stakeholder training workshop for collaborating within and across teams and functions (HR Business Partner R. Gundborg, H. Innes-Brown OTIERH); Poster presentation by DCs. Day 5:(no DCs) Review meeting / Consortium meeting.

Day 1:(STK) Basics of functional neuroanatomy (P. Belin, T. Chaminade, O Coulon, AMU); Team building: Hike in the Calanques and Paintball competition. Day 2: (STK) Speaker ID modelling in neural audio generation (Y. Jamagushi, NII); (TS) Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Management of IP, Patent Technology Transfer (N. Pontoppidan OTIERH). Day 3: (STK) Brain and Voice: Cerebral bases of voice processing in humans and other animals (P. Belin, AMU; A. Andics, ELTE; S. Frühholz, UiO); Forensic speech science vs speech technology (L. Tavi, NBI); Automatic Speaker Recognition; and benchmarking/evaluation of Voice Deepfake detectors (T. Kinnunen, UEF); (TS) The Art of Grantsmanship (M.H Grosbras, P; Belin, AMU).  Day 4:(TS) Voice Tech Entrepreneurship (C. Teissedre, ODIA); (STK) Presentation of the Institute of Language, Communication and the Brain (P. Blache; A; M. Montant; A. Rey; AMU). Presentations by DCs. 3-min teaser session by DCs, and Poster Reception (DCs and external).  Day 5: (no DCs) Review meeting / Consortium/EAB meeting.

Day 1:Day 1: (STK) Wildpark visit focused on vocal communication (A. Andics, ELTE); Team building: Escape rooms.  Day 2: (STK) Drivers of signal evolution, function and emergence of acoustic communication across species (N. Mathevon U Lyon, K. Pisanski UJM); (TS): Communicating scientific results with lay audience, stakeholders, and the press (posters, oral presentations); Media Training (E. Rodero UPF, E. Kubinyi ELTE).  Day 3: (STK) Bioacoustics: vocal information encoding in mammals (D. Reby UJM, T. Faragó ELTE); (TS) Creating short video abstracts for scientific publications (A. D. Molnár, M. Jurkovics, Naturefilm). Day 4: (STK) Comparative neuroethology: imaging mammalian voice processing mechanisms (P. Belin AMU, S. Frühholz UiO, A. Andics ELTE); (TS) Scientific blogs and social networks, publication accessibility (S. Bőhm, L. R. Zsiros, ELTE). Day 5: (no DCs) Review meeting / Consortium meeting.

Côte d’Azur. Day 2: (TS) Entrepreneurship training (L. Merlo, BPI France; S. Rouget, Foundation Sophia Antipolis; M. Segovia, OM; M. Clerc, Inria). Day 3: (TSK) Distinguished collaborators of OM (W. Nogueira, U Hospital of Hannover; E. Lopez-Poveda, U Salamanca; T. Goehring, U Cambridge; M. Fetcher, U Southampton); (TS) Adapt your elevated pitch for industry or academia I. Presentations by all DCs (half to academic, half to industrial panels). Day 4: (TS) Adapt your elevated pitch for industry or academia II. Concluding Round Table with EAB. VoCS Concluding Party. Day 5: (no DCs) Review meeting / Consortium / EAB meeting.