Catégorie d'actualités: Awarded projects

Awardee of the ERC Starting Grant 2025, Olga Kepinska is honoured by the CNRS

At the end of December, the CNRS published a presentation of our new colleague, Olga Kepinska, and highlighted the European Research Council 2025 project for which she has obtained funding. The project is entitled ‘DiverseSounds’ and studies how ‘prenatal language experience shapes foetal brain development and subsequent language learning’. Congratulations again on this achievement!

Profile on the CNRS website: https://www.provence-corse.cnrs.fr/fr/personne/olga-kepinska

MER amU website:https://mission-europe-recherche.fr/fr/projets-laureats/conseil-europeen-recherche-erc/diverse-sounds

The LPL now hosts two European projects, including the “LaDy” project, winner of the European Research Council's Consolidator Grant 2024, led by CNRS research director Kristof Strijkers.

How can humans and robots work together? Improving the relationship with a conversational assistant in an industrial context

We are pleased to announce that the ENGAGE project led by Océane Granier, PhD student at LPL, has been selected as part of the latest Carnot Cognition call for resources.

Summary: Our project is based on a partnership between the LPL Aix-en-Provence and the Bordeaux-based company Airudit. The two partners have set up a CIFRE thesis together in order to lay the foundations for their partnership on September 1, 2023. This project is in the field of human-agent interaction. Its aim is to propose a conversational assistant, adapted to the professional context, which will have the ability to adapt to its user's engagement.

Project title: ENGAGE - Improving the relationship with a conversational assistant in an industrial context: measuring and optimizing user engagement

Project partners:
LPL: Océane Granier, Laurent Prévot, Roxane Bertrand
Airudit: Kévin Gravouil, Philippe Lebas (CEO)

 

Credits: O. Granier / LPL

T is for Treu, but how do you pronounce that?

We are happy to announce that Pauline Welby, LPL member and research associate at the Interdisciplinary laboratory for research in education (Univ. of New Caledonia), has just been awarded funding as part of the Australia-France 2024 collaborative research program. This is a joint funding from the French Embassy in Australia and the Australian Academy of Social Sciences. The program aims to support interdisciplinary research that addresses contemporary societal challenges and strengthens links between Australia, France and the Pacific region.

The project “T is for Treu, but how do you pronounce that? Integrating pronunciation respellings into multimodal language learning resources” aims to help teachers and heritage learners of the Drehu language, spoken by the indigenous Kanak people of New Caledonia, to correctly pronounce words by addressing conflicts between written and spoken language. Specifically, the project focuses on the word ‘treu’, which means ‘moon’ in Drehu. The challenge is that the pronunciation of ‘treu’ may be influenced by the French language, leading to incorrect pronunciation.

To overcome this challenge, the research team will develop tools and resources that provide pronunciation respellings based on French orthography. These tools will be integrated into multimedia texts to assist learners in understanding and pronouncing Drehu words accurately. The project builds on previous research efforts and aims to preserve and promote the linguistic diversity of the region.

Partners: Aix Marseille University, CNRS, Laboratoire Parole et Langage ; University Paris 3/INALCO ; University of New Caledonia ; University of South Australia ; Flinders University (Australia)

 

More information: https://socialsciences.org.au/news/2024-australia-france-collaborative-research-program/

Link to an interactive alphabet book in Drehu: https://c-lara.unisa.edu.au/accounts/rendered_texts/17/normal/page_2.html

Contact: pauline.welby@cnrs.fr

 

 

Credits: P. Welby

SOLIST project: Qingye SHEN joins the LPL

As part of the SOLIST project, we are pleased to announce the arrival of Ms Qingye Shen as a technical collaborator. Qingye Shen will contribute to the implementation of various experiments aimed at studying interactions between listeners in speech perception. Qingye Shen is a Chinese national and holds a bachelor's degree in biological sciences and a master's degree in ecology from East China Normal University in Shanghai. She previously held administrative responsibilities at the Shanghai Key Laboratory of Brain Functional Genomics. SOLIST (The Social Listener) is a research project supported by the Institut Carnot Cognition. It brings together members of the laboratory (Noël Nguyen, Leonardo Lancia, Thierry Legou) and two French partners (Julien Diard, LPNC, Grenoble; Ladislas Nalborczyk, NeuroSpin, Paris-Saclay).

More information: https://www.lpl-aix.fr/actualite/nouvelles-du-carnot-cognition-interview-avec-roxane-bertrand-deux-nouveaux-projets-lpl-finances/

News from Carnot Cognition: Interview with Roxane Bertrand & two new LPL projects funded!

Roxane Bertrand interviewed by Carnot Cognition

Over the last few months, the Carnot Cognition Institute has published a series of testimonials from researchers and industrialists, highlighting partnership research initiatives in cognitive technologies. In this context, the Institute has just interviewed Roxane Bertrand, CNRS research director.

Link to the interview (in French): https://www.institut-cognition.com/interview/roxane-bertrand-lpl/

Two new LPL projects have been selected in the latest Carnot Cognition call for projects in 2023
  • Social Listener - SOLIST project led by Noël Nguyen (LPL) in collaboration with Julien Diard (LPNC) and Ladislas Nalborczyk (Neurospin).
  • Projet EXPOLECT_DOM led by Stéphanie Ducrot (LPL) in collaboration with Jonathan Grainger (LPC)

Augmented reality at the service of deaf people

We are pleased to announce that Brigitte Bigi, CNRS researcher at LPL, has been awarded for the project "Seeing sounds with automated 'Cued Speech': augmented reality at the service of deaf people".

Funded by the International Foundation for Applied Research on Disability (FIRAH) to the tune of €50,000, it has been developed in partnership with the Datha Association (Parents of deaf children and friends of deaf people) and the International Academy Supporting Cued Adaptations (AISAC).

The LPL project team includes the following members: Brigitte Bigi (project manager), Núria Gala, Michel Pitermann and Carine André.

More information:
Elaboration of the first LPL Cued speech corpus (2021) : https://www.lpl-aix.fr/en/actualite/what-about-cued-speech/
Link to the Cued speech corpus (CLeLfPC) : https://www.ortolang.fr/market/corpora/clelfpc

Credits: 2021 B. Bigi and M. Zimmermann

Feedback about the mission in Maasai country: the SYSORI project

Following a first mission in 2020, Alain Ghio (LPL) and Didier Demolin (LPP) returned to Maasai country last June to record speakers around Arusha in northern Tanzania using laboratory techniques such as aerophonometry and electroglottography for their field study.

Full article on the Great African Rift Interdisciplinary Group (CNRS) website (in French): https://rift-cnrs.fr/theme-recherche/juin-2022-retour-mission-pays-massai/

First mission in 2020 (in French): https://lejournal.cnrs.fr/articles/dans-le-secret-des-langues-a-clics

 

Photo credits: Projet Sysori / A. Ghio et D. Demolin