Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s (HBKU) Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) sponsored the 2022 IEEE Spoken Language Technology Workshop (SLT 2022), the first to be held in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

Taking place between January 9 and 12, the workshop saw more than 200 academics, industry researchers and specialists from around the world gather at the Marsa Malaz Kempinski to discuss advances in this niche discipline. Participants attended a series of special talks, keynotes, paper presentations and panel discussions on a wide range of topics concerning spoken language technologies, including automated speech recognition, machine learning for languages, and text-to-speech applications.

Held biannually, the IEEE SLT Workshop is the flagship event of the Institute’s Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee (SLTC). The event provides researchers the chance to connect, exchange knowledge and discuss opportunities for collaboration.

In another first, QCRI also hosted the IEEE SLT Workshop’s SLT-CODE hackathon on its premises between January 7 and 8. The competition provided 100 university students - split into 19 teams - from around the world with a unique opportunity to collaborate and devise ways to advance and build upon current technologies to better understand spoken languages from across the world. A panel of globally renowned experts served as judges and advisors over the course of the hackathon.