Nordic Graduate School of Language Technology

NGSLT Board Meeting

19th November, 2008

14.00-17.00

Department of Speech, Music and Hearing, seminar room Fantum, Lindstedtsvägen 24

The Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden

Present: Robin Cooper (Sweden, chair), Vera Evdokimova (NW Russia, student representative), Peter Juel Henrichsen (Denmark), Mare Koit (Estonia), Kimmo Koskenniemi (Finland), Eirikur Rögnvaldsson (Iceland), Inguna Skadina (Latvia), Pavel Skrelin (NW Russia), Sylvana Sofkova Hashemi (Sweden), Torbjørn Svendsen (Norway), Marcus Uneson (Sweden, student representative), Päivi Väätänen (Finland)

  1. formalia
    It was decided that Robin and Sylvana would be secretary and that the minutes would be placed on the website for checking.
    The agenda was approved.
  2. information
    • Nodalida conference, May 14-16 2009, Odense, Denmark
    • CLARIN and CLARA: Kimmo informed about an application submitted in spring for postdoctoral fellowships. The result is expected in January or February 2009.
    • Robin informed about plans for a National Masters Program in Sweden:
      • organization of courses: each university will have a program where the courses are taught at national level – sharing courses like this would possibly mean that individual universities would be able to have a Masters programme without a full complement of students. It would not be feasible for several universities in Sweden to attract a full complement of Masters students to (e.g. 25) in language technology each year.
      • GSLT basic courses can be Master courses
      • There is Nordic interest in participating in such a programme - organization at the Nordic level could result in very similar activities to those currently carried out within NGSLT
      • Some considerations for a possible funding application:
        • Collect information in NGSLT-countries on the number of students applying for master programs to get a view of interest, what programs exist (LT, speech technology, other?).
        • Look at European masters – students spending time at same place for one semester to one year
        • Lectures could possibly be on-line in iTunes U
    • Status of GSLT: Money until 2012, funding for students completely to 2008
    • Eirikur informed about new call for Master programs in Northern Europe, probably in the beginning of 2009.
  3. minutes of last meeting (html)
    approved.
  4. student issues (student representatives)
    The students organized a meeting in connection with the course held in Reykjavik and the following points were raised:
    • there is lots of interest for publishing in NEALT-journal
    • many students are pleased with the funding for conferences – GOTAL, SLTC
    • short courses are a good idea for introductory courses, probably not an optimal form for specialization
    • networking and socializing could be improved in connection to courses, not necessary a responsibility for the teachers but could be considered
    • good to know which students had graduated and when and what are they doing after their graduation, some documentation/diploma/certificate should be in place with a summary of courses taken, or NEALT could have a prize for the best thesis in Northern Europe.
  5. budget information
    Robin presented a summary of our use of funds up to the end of 2008(pdf). There is enough money to continue our activities for another six months or so. We have also received confirmation from NordForsk that we can use the funds during 2009. The final report for NGSLT should, if possible, be submitted in April. It was decided that NGSLT students may receive support for making presentations at Nodalida in Odense.
  6. course information and planning
    Sylvana informed about enrolment and attendance at courses given in autumn 2008: Auditory analysis of speech sounds (Russia), Automatic speech recognition - advanced topics (Norway) and the five courses all by GSLT: Speech Technology, Linguistic resources, Speech Synthesis, Machine Translation, Clustering (all by GSLT)
    For the spring 2009 a plan was made to announce:
    • courses by GSLT
    • a short course in Riga on Treebanks with Prof. Eva Hajicova, Charles University, Prague as the lecturer
    • a short course on resource grammars arranged as a summer school by Aarne Ranta, Chalmers, Sweden.
    A suggestion was made for running one course by GSLT as a distance course as a follow up for future continuation for courses on Master level (Kimmo):
    • perhaps more general course – NLP, Statistical methods
    • Since the NLP-course as the introductory course will maybe not be offered it is possibly a good choice for a distance course
    There was also a suggestion for arranging a conference for NGSLT students and alumni. Nodalida conference in May could be a opportunity. Action: consider arranging such a workshop.
    Another suggestion was to promote publications.

    Action: ask the current course coordinators for GSLT-courses if they are interested in giving a distance version of their course. Consider if funding for this could be offered by NGSLT.
  7. NGSLT future
    There was a discussion about NordForsk and networks for national graduate schools, proposal maybe in April 2009. There was a general agreement among the participants present, about going on with such application when announced. The relevant url is http://www.nordforsk.org/text.cfm?id=382&path=4,29 Action: follow this up
    Also European funds were discussed, but no relevant possibilities were found.
  8. NEALT report
    Kimmo and Mare gave a report on NEALT and informed that there will be soon a call for submissions for NEALT's journal.
  9. date of next meeting
    13th May 2009 in connection to Nodalida Conference, in Odense, Denmark.
  10. any other business
    No other business.
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