Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), part of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), is to host its first annual workshop for Arabic Speech - an organization that supports the Arabic speech science and speech technology community - from April 29 to 30 at The Researchery in Education City. 

The workshop, to be led by QCRI’s Qatar Center for Artificial Intelligence (QCAI), will bring together researchers, practitioners, students, and experts in the fields of speech recognition and language processing with a specific interest in Arabic (standard and dialectal) to present recent advances and bridge the gap between research and industry requirements. 

Guest speakers from leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies in speech processing, including Google, Amazon, and Facebook AI Research (FAIR), as well as prestigious speech research teams from Johns Hopkins, Edinburgh and Aalto universities, are to deliver talks covering a broad range of topics related to the Arab language.

Dr. Ahmed Ali, Principal Engineer, QCRI, said: “We look forward to welcoming seasoned experts in speech recognition technologies and researchers who have carried out extensive studies to advance the interpreting of the Arabic language, to share their expertise and insights. Participants will benefit from exploratory discussions and relevant networking opportunities. They will work to formulate solutions to overcome some of the computational obstacles associated with developing advanced speech technologies.”

Talks to be presented include ‘Emotion Recognition and Sentiment Analysis Based on Speech for call center applications’ by Najim Dehak, Johns Hopkins University; ‘Multi-Dialect Speech Recognition’ by Mohamed Elfeky, Google; ‘Arabic Video ASR: Challenges and Opportunities’ by Abdelrahman Mohamed, Facebook AI Research (FAIR); ‘Aalto Submission to the MGB-3 Challenge’ by Peter Smit, Aalto University & Inscripta.io; and ‘DNN Statistical Interpretation and Normalization For ASR’ by Erfan Loweimi, University of Edinburgh.

The workshop program will also include ‘Speech Technology Research at AWS’ by Hassan Sawaf, Amazon AWS; ‘Arabic Linguistic Resources at Birzeit University’ by Mustafa Jarrar, Birzeit University; ‘Building Large Scale Speech Resources for Arabic – ELRA’ by Khalid Choukri, ELDA; and ‘Algerian Hierarchical Classification for Spoken Dialect Identification’ by Hadda Cherroun, Université Amar Telidji Laghouat.

Academics and professionals from industrial fields are invited to attend and contribute to open dialogue with leading experts and practitioners from around the world.

QCAI supports QCRI’s mission to become a global leader in computing research in identified areas that will bring positive impact on the wider community. The center is committed to reinforcing the importance of AI as an integral part of national development and policy. In doing so, QCAI aims to attract top AI research and entrepreneurial talent to Qatar.

As one of three leading research institutes within HBKU, QCRI is tasked with providing pertinent solutions to national, regional, and global challenges. The institute operates four departments, each addressing Arabic Language Technologies, Cyber Security, Data Analytics, and Social Computing.

For more information about the event, please contact Dr. Ahmed Ali, Principal Engineer Arabic Language Technologies, amali@hbku.edu.qa

For more information on QCAI, please visit qcai.qcri.org.