Aalto speech technology postdoc programme (APOS) to train Indian doctoral graduates

APOS is being developed by Professor Paavo Alku, IEEE and ISCA Fellow, and an expert in Speech Communication Technology from the Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics.

The research theme in focus for APOS is biomarking of state of health from speech in diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and heart failure. APOS is proposed to strengthen Professor Paavo Alku’s long-term cooperation and networking with the Indian Institute for Information Technology Hyderabad (IIIT Hyderabad) and the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur (IIT Kharagpur). For doctoral graduates from IIIT Hyderabad and IIT Kharagpur aiming at academic careers in India, APOS provides a possibility to carry out a postdoc in a world-class team in speech technology at Aalto.  This research topic is based on artificial intelligence (AI) which links APOS to the Finnish Center for AI (FCAI), the Finnish Flagship for AI. 

According to Professor Paavo Alku, “APOS will have a great impact both on fundamental research and on health and wellbeing technology. The studied technologies are of high societal and industrial impact because they can be used in preventive health care to improve quality of life of individuals suffering from global diseases and to decrease health expenditures for society”. 

APOS has collaborators also from Helsinki University Hospital (HUS) and Tampere University. 

APOS is seed-funded as part of the India Pilot initiative from the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture. Aalto is coordinating the India Pilot Network FICORE (Finnish Indian Consortia for Research and Education) which involves 38 higher education institutions from Finland and India. 

See also, the joint publication from the APOS collaborators on ‘Extraction and Utilization of Excitation Information of Speech: A Review’ in IEEE’s flagship journal (Proceedings of IEEE).