Table of Contents

1 Summary ..............................................................................2 What HCSNet Is.....................................................................

2.1 The Scope of the Network .............................................2.2 The Aims of the Network................................................2.3 How HCSNet Works........................................................

2.3.1 The Executive.......................................................2.3.2 The Steering Committee.......................................2.3.3 Funding Mechanisms............................................

2.4 The Significance of the Network.....................................3 Activities in 2008...................................................................

3.1 Priority Areas..................................................................3.1.1 Effective Interactive Interfaces.............................3.1.2 Human Communication Disorders........................3.1.3 Next-Generation Search Technology...................3.1.4 Perception and Action...........................................3.1.5 Speech..................................................................

3.2 Connecting Researchers across Disciplines...................3.2.1 SummerFest 2008.................................................3.2.2 Workshops Held in 2008.......................................3.2.3 Seminars Supported in 2008.................................

3.3 Interdisciplinary Graduate Training................................3.4 Exploiting Previously Unrecognised

Intersections3.5 Making Visible a Network of Experts..............................

3.5.1 The HCSNet Website.............................................3.5.2 The HCSNet Update Newsletter............................3.5.3 Other Publicity Activities.......................................

3.6 Building Australia’s Reputation in Human Communication Science...............................................................4 Plans for 2009.......................................................................

4.1 Priority Areas..................................................................4.2 SummerFest 2009..........................................................4.3 Workshops......................................................................4.4 International Visiting Speaker Program..........................4.5 Student Support.............................................................4.6 Resources......................................................................

4.7 Dissemination.................................................................

Appendices...................................................................................A. ARC Reporting Requirements................................................

A.1 Quantitative Performance Indicators.............................A.2 Qualitative Performance Indicators...............................

B. Register of Participants.........................................................B.1 Active Participants..........................................................B.2 Passive Participants........................................................

C. Electronic Visibility................................................................C.1 The HCSNet Website......................................................C.2 The HCSNet Online Video...............................................C.3 The HCSNet Newsletter..................................................

D. HCSNet Media Releases and Coverage.................................E. ARC Discovery Program Funding Awarded to HCSNet Members for 2008 and 2009...........................................F. Details of publications arising from HCSNet Events..............

1 SummaryHCSNet ― the Australian Research Council’s Research Network in Human Communication Science ― is one of 24 such networks funded by the ARC, designed to encourage collaborative approaches to research in interdisciplinary contexts. This document reports on the activities of HCSNet during 2008, the fourth year of the Network’s existence.1

[Comment to Mel: the footnote text pointed to at the end of the paragraph above appears to have disappeared.]

HCSNet’s focus on human communication means that it brings together researchers from an extremely broad range of research fields, from psychology and linguistics through computer science and artificial intelligence to music and digital media. Our primary role is to connect leading and emerging researchers across the disciplines that make up Human Communication Science by means of a number of targeted funding schemes. By doing this, we aim to identify previously unrecognised intersections, to support interdisciplinary graduate training and exchanges, and to help generate new approaches and knowledge. Successful achievement of these objectives plays an important part in building Australia’s reputation as a leader in communication science and technology.

This year has been a successful one for HCSNet. We have seen exciting collaborations within and across our five key Priority Areas: Effective Interactive Interfaces, Human Communication Disorders, Next-Generation Search Technology, Perception and Action and Speech. New linkages have been forged with industry, the community and other end-user groups; we have funded new initiatives directed at postgraduate, undergraduate and high school students; and international collaborations have arisen from HCSNet workshops and other events. During the year, the Network funded eleven workshops in areas as diverse as ‘Next-Generation Search in Biomedical Information’, ‘Designing the Australian National Corpus’, ‘Embodied Interaction in Mobile, Physical and Virtual Environments’, ‘Narrative and Communication Disorders’ and ‘Speech, Perception and Action’, with each workshop attracting an average attendance of over 40 participants from a range of disciplines. Our annual flagship event, the week-long SummerFest held in December, attracted over 230 attendees; and, over the year as a whole, 359 Network members took part in our activities, of whom 177 were students. Our participant database now provides profiles on 1370 members from 40 Australian universities and more than 250 other institutions and organisations, representing over 400 areas of research involved in the network.

This report provides details on all our activities during the year, and points the way forward to continuing success in 2009.

Robert DaleHCSNet ConvenorMarch 2009

2 What HCSNet Is2.1 The Scope of the NetworkHCSNet was awarded five years’ funding by the Australian Research Council in late 2004, as one of a number of research networks whose aim is to encourage collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to research. The study and understanding of human communication is an area that stands to benefit significantly from interdisciplinary: the range of disciplines that have something to say about human communication is incredibly diverse, and yet, prior to the creation of HCSNet, there were no substantive attempts at bridging the gaps between these disciplines. After four years of activities whose primary focus is to bring people together, the Network now includes participation from researchers, students and others in the following disciplines and subdisciplines:

Arts, Social Sciences, and the Humanities: Music, Music Technology, Philosophy of Language, Sociolinguistics and Anthropological Linguistics, Theatre and Gesture Studies, and Digital Media;

Computing and Engineering: Affective Computing, Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL), Data Mining, Human–Computer Interaction, Information Retrieval, Natural Language Processing and Language Technology, Signal Processing, and Speech Technology;

Linguistics: Conversational and Discourse Analysis, Formal Semantics, Formal Syntax, Morphology, Phonetics and Phonology, Sign Language, Speech Science and Forensic Speech Science; and

Psychology: Auditory Physiology, Cognitive Neuropsychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Developmental Psychology, Perception, Psychoacoustics, Psycholinguistics and Statistics.

All of the Network’s activities are driven by the fundamental belief that, by bringing together researchers across these interdisciplinary divides, we can generate fresh thinking about hard problems in the understanding of human communication. As those within the Network seek to understand the perspectives of other research areas, new ways of thinking about research problems arise.

2.2 The Aims of the NetworkOur aims are captured by the goals we stated in the original proposal that created the Network:

to connect leading and emerging researchers across disciplines, in order to solve the toughest outstanding

problems related to explaining, simulating and augmenting human communication;

to implement strategies for interdisciplinary graduate training of upcoming new researchers who will lead the field in human communication theory and technology;

to identify and exploit previously unrecognised intersections between disciplines that will generate a wealth of new approaches and knowledge;

to make visible a network of experts who will advise government on emerging trends in communication technology; and

to build Australia’s reputation as a research leader in human communication science and technology.

We work to achieve these goals via a number of means:

1. An annual summer school, to allow students, young researchers, and established researchers to learn about research areas, methods and paradigms which may impact upon their particular research area, but fall outside their disciplinary training.

2. An annual multidisciplinary conference, to provide a forum where researchers can meet and discuss ideas with those working in other disciplines.

3. Focussed interdisciplinary workshops, on specific topics proposed by participants in the Network, to allow interdisciplinary possibilities to be generated, explored, and developed to fruition.

4. Early Career Researcher support, including encouragement to lead Network activities, and the provision of travel bursaries to attend HCSNet events.2

[Another footnote gone AWOL.]

5. Student support, including travel bursaries for attendance at HCSNet workshops and other events.

6. Competitive placement award programs, for Early Career Researchers and Graduate Students, to provide opportunities for new researchers to build professional networks and high-level research collaborations.

7. Collaborative Grant-Writing Support to encourage the submission of cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional project proposals to major funding schemes such as the ARC Discovery Program, the ARC Linkage Program, and the NHMRC, by supporting travel for the purpose of grant preparation.

In addition to the above activities and programs, we actively solicit suggestions from the membership for innovative one-off ideas that promote research in Human Communication Science.

Our activities in 2008 under each of these headings are discussed in Section 3 of this report, and our future plans are presented in Section 4.

2.3 How HCSNet Works2.3.1 The ExecutiveHCSNet is run on a day-to-day basis by the Executive Committee, consisting of Professor Robert Dale (Convenor, Macquarie University), Professor Denis Burnham (University of Western Sydney) and Associate Professor Kate Stevens (University of Western Sydney). In 2008, the Executive met on a fortnightly basis, alternating between Macquarie University and the University of Western Sydney, to plan and execute activities. Two part-time Administrative Coordinators provided support to the HCSNet Executive Committee in 2008: Mel Gallagher at the University of Western Sydney, and Chris Cassidy at Macquarie University. HCSNet Website support was provided at Macquarie by Ben Phelan, and Michelle Jablonski provided administrative database support.

2.3.2 The Steering Committee

The Network’s overall strategies are identified and refined by the Executive Committee; they are then ratified and reviewed at an annual meeting of the HCSNet Steering Committee, which for this reporting year met on 4th December 2008 at the University of New South Wales. The Steering Committee consists of a representative of each of the institutions that make a financial commitment to the Network, plus an industry representative. Our Steering Committee members for 2008 and 2009 are shown in the table below.

Institution 2008 Representative

2009 Representative

ASSTA Michael Wagner Michael WagnerAustralian National University

Tom Gedeon Tom Gedeon

CSIRO Cécile Paris Cécile ParisIndustry Representative, VeCommerce

Dennis Chan Peter Nann

Macquarie University Robert Dale Robert DaleMacquarie University Max Coltheart Anne CastlesQueensland University of Technology

James Hogan James Hogan

RMIT University Lawrence Cavedon

Lawrence Cavedon

University of Canberra Stephen Barrass Stephen BarrassUniversity of Melbourne Sarah Wilson Sarah WilsonUniversity of New England

Bill Noble Bill Noble

University of New South Wales

Emery Schubert Emery Schubert

Adam Vogel University of

Melbourne

I have been fortunate to attend six events organised by HCSNet and have presented at five of them. The process has not only given me the opportunity to discuss my doctoral work among national and international colleagues, I have also begun working collaboratively with a couple of other members as a result of the opportunities afforded to participants. Dr Chetty (University of Canberra), Ganesh Naik (RMIT) and I are working on a project entitled 'Improving signal to noise ratios of voice files using temporal decorrelation source separation'. This collaboration was formed at the Joint HCSNet - EII Workshop 'Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access' held in Sydney in May 2008. Dr Libby Cardell (University of Queensland) and I are working on a project

University of Queensland

David Copland David Copland

University of Sydney Simon Carlile Simon CarlileUniversity of Western Australia

Robyn Owens John Henderson

University of Western Sydney

Denis Burnham Denis Burnham

University of Western Sydney

Kate Stevens Kate Stevens

At the end of 2008, Dennis Chan, Max Coltheart and Robyn Owens stepped down from their positions on the Steering Committee and we welcomed new institutional representatives for 2009: Anne Castles (Macquarie University), Peter Nann (Industry Representative, VeCommerce) and John Henderson (University of Western Australia).

Our Priority Areas, discussed later in this report, have become central to HCSNet's activities; consequently, we now hold joint meetings with our Steering Committee and the leaders of our Priority Area once a year, with additional Priority Area meetings held during the year for planning purposes.

2.3.3 Funding Mechanisms

HCSNet provides funding for a range of activities via a number of funding programs, which are publicised on our website and periodically advertised in our weekly electronic newsletter:

Our Workshop Program provides funds for workshops in topical interdisciplinary areas of interest; the primary purpose of HCSNet funding here is to make possible events that would otherwise not take place. Typically between $15000 and $20000 is allocated per workshop, including $5000 targeted specifically at student travel support.

Our International Visiting Speaker Program is intended to provide up to $4000 in support for overseas visitors, who typically provide a seminar at three institutions across the country as a condition of receiving HCSNet funding. The aim here is to maximise the value of a visitor’s presence in Australia.

Our Seminar Support Program encourages cross-institutional collaboration by making it possible for an Australian-based speaker to give a seminar at an institution other than his or her own; typical funding provided is up to $1000.

Our HCSNet Early Career Researcher (ECR) Network Awards provide financial support for an ECR in each of our five Priority Areas to spend a block of time (two weeks or longer) at an Australian research laboratory, university department or other facility with an interest in human communication. HCSNet provides financial support of up to $2500 to the ECR, and a further $500 to the host institution to assist with local expenses.

Our HCSNet Graduate Student Network Awards provide financial support for an HDR student in each of our five Priority Areas to spend a block of time (two weeks or longer) at an Australian research laboratory, university department or other facility with an interest in human communication. As with the ECR Network Awards, HCSNet provides financial support of up to $2500 to the recipient, and a further $500 to the host institution to assist with local expenses.

Our Collaborative Grant-Writing Support Program aims to encourage the submission of cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional project proposals to major funding schemes such as the ARC Discovery Program, the ARC Linkage Program, and the NHMRC, by supporting travel for the purpose of grant preparation. The program provides travel and accommodation support up to a maximum of $500 per person, for up to two persons travelling to the site of a third party in order to prepare a grant proposal.

Funding under these schemes is awarded on the basis of proposals submitted by Network participants. In 2008, decisions about funding for many of the events we support were devolved to the Priority Areas (see Section 3) to ensure that activities proposed fit within the Network’s defined areas of interest; some funding is retained centrally for events which fall outside the scope of the Priority Areas. In all our funding mechanisms, Early Career Researchers and postgraduate students have priority. Applications for the Early Career Researcher and Graduate Student Network Awards are assessed annually by the HCSNet Executive Committee in conjunction with a nominated assessor who has a background relevant to the proposal.

2.4 The Significance of the Network The development of communication systems in humans and machines, and of the ways in which humans and machines

Participants at the HCSNet Next-Generation Search Workshop on Search in Biomedical Information held at QUT on 30 November 2008

Advanced Aviation Training Device

interact via these systems, are amongst the most striking technological advances of recent times. Countries that participate in the development of these technologies are countries that will prosper. Australia has established expertise, international credibility, and national and international contacts in speech and language science and technology, computer science, music, and acoustic/auditory science; it is widely recognised that solving the tough problems in these areas requires bringing together researchers from across these contributing disciplines, and that is what HCSNet aims to do.

Networking these researchers has a significant impact on Smart Information Use in Frontier Technologies, a designated key priority area for the Australian Research Council. By bringing together these interdisciplinary skill sets with a tight focus and the determination to crack difficult problems, we prepare the ground for breakthrough outcomes in areas as diverse as: hearing prostheses for music and for tone languages; avatars in web interfaces and data retrieval and data mining systems; automatic speech recognition in noisy environments; the automatic detection of human alarm calls; and productive means of organising and preserving linguistic and non-linguistic data.

These advances will not happen overnight, but over the four years of the Network’s existence we have seen a wide range of cross-disciplinary discussions, new collaborations, and the submission of a number of cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional project proposals to major funding schemes. A number of our workshops have produced proceedings, or are in the process of producing special issue publications arising from those events. We have provided support for Early Career Researchers, postgraduate students, and undergraduate students to attend our events so that cross-disciplinary connections can be sustained into the future. All our workshop materials, including video and slide presentations, are archived on the HCSNet website. By fostering and building on these new connections, HCSNet, with its diverse disciplines but common aims, has the breadth and focus to provide a platform on which significant advances can be built.

3 Activities in 20083.1 Priority AreasGiven the breadth of disciplines represented in the Network, our strategy for encouraging interaction in our first year of existence was very much bottom-up. We organised a number of events aimed at identifying novel interactions between the wide range of disciplines represented by Network members, with the aim of seeing what new ideas would arise when researchers were confronted with sometimes radically different perspectives from their own. Amongst other things, these activities helped us to build up a picture of which particular disciplines showed most likelihood of collaborating fruitfully with others.

With this exploration as a starting point, the major strategic shift in our second year of operation was the goal of identifying a number of key intersections of research activity. These Priority Research Areas would be ones where we believed the Network could make a real difference by bringing together researchers across a number of disciplines. Each Priority Area was to be an area of research activity that would:

encompass problem-centred, rather than discipline-centred, approaches to as-yet-unsolved issues or problems in Human Communication Science;

require novel collaborations of experts across Human Communication Science disciplines for their solution;

set the scene for future research and training in Human Communication Science; and

assist in the clear definition of the emerging field of Human Communication Science.

To ensure the success of these Priority Areas, we also considered it appropriate that any candidate area of research should meet the following criteria:

There should be two individuals within the Network who could act as champions and drivers for the area, one an established researcher and one an ECR. We saw the active involvement of individuals with the energy to move things forward as essential.

There should be a critical mass of expertise within the HCSNet membership, drawing from two or more disciplines.

There should be the potential for the research area to make an impact in terms of public interest, pressworthiness, government and political clout, the ARC and its Priority Areas, research, and industry.

The area should have international relevance, as might be evidenced by the existence of 4―5 highly-regarded international researchers who would be interested in the area.

After extensive discussion and consultation, five Priority Areas were identified: Effective Interactive Interfaces, Human Communication Disorders, Next-Generation Search Technology, Perception and Action, and Speech. An Early Career Researcher was assigned to lead each Priority Area, with the assistance and guidance of a more senior Network member (typically a member of the HCSNet Executive). The Priority Areas now provide hubs around which our researchers congregate, while our funding programs still provide scope for activities which fall outside the scope of the Priority Areas but within HCSNet's wider remit.reThis a Leader ExecutivePriority Area Leader Executive

RepresentativeEffective Interactive Interfaces

Lawrence Cavedon, Rod Farmer

Robert Dale

Human Communication Disorders

David Copland Max Coltheart (2008)Anne Castles (2009)

Next-Generation Search Technology

Diego Mollá Aliod Robert Dale

Perception and Action

Rick van der Zwan Kate Stevens

Speech Chris Davis Denis Burnham

In 2008, Priority Area Planning Meetings were held in Coffs Harbour on 14th March, and in Sydney on 6th June and 14th December. An outline of the focus of each of the Priority Areas is provided on the following pages, along with a summary of activities carried out by the Priority Areas in 2008. Detailed workshop reports are outlined in Section 3.2.2 and plans for Priority Area activities in 2009 are outlined in Section 4.

HCSNet Workshops and Priority Areas Meeting, 14th March 2008, Coffs HarbourLeft to right: Bruce Millar, Lawrence Cavedon, Sarah Wilson, Michael Wagner, Rick van der Zwan, Kate Stevens, Robert Dale, Diego Mollá Aliod, Chris Davis, Denis Burnham, David Grayden, David Copland

3.1.1 Effective Interactive Interfaces

Leaders: Lawrence Cavedon, Rod Farmer and Robert Dale

As our technology gets more complex, so do the interfaces we use to communicate with that technology. Communication breakdown in these interfaces is evident all around us: two very visible instances are video recorder remote controls with functionalities too complex to understand, and repeated frustration at call-centre automation via less than perfect speech recognition. But it doesn’t need to be like this: humans are more complex than any devices we have yet created, but we communicate with each other effortlessly.

This research priority area focuses on what it is that makes a human–computer interface, particularly one where speech is used as the mode of communication, effective. Can we achieve effectiveness by making these interfaces more ‘natural’, and if so, how natural should such interfaces be? In particular, what can we learn from human–human communication? What aspects of communication between humans does it make sense to attempt to mimic in human–machine interfaces? Can our understanding of the production and perception of music help make interfaces more effective and affective? By bringing together expertise from contributing disciplines as diverse as speech processing, linguistics, psychology, human–computer interaction, graphics, music, and audio-visual communication, this Priority Area addresses the engineering, psychological, and sociological challenges in designing and supporting successful interaction

Activities in 2008

OutreachThe Priority Area continued to perform outreach to other initiatives, including other HCSNet Priority Areas and other ARC Research Networks. In particular, we held a joint workshop with the HCSNet Next-Generation Search Priority Area and the ARC Research Network on Enterprise Information Infrastructure, described below. Continuing our outreach to the Interaction Design community and in particular to the industry sector of that community, Rod Farmer was appointed to joint Priority Area leadership.

HCSNet-EII Joint Workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access This workshop, jointly organised with the ARC Research Network on Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII), was held on 16th and 17th May at NICTA's facilities at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney. The participating HCSNet Priority Areas were Interactive Interfaces and Next-Generation Search.

Workshop on Embodied Interaction in Mobile, Physical and Virtual Environments

Held on 4th and 5th December as part of HCSNet SummerFest, the focus of this workshop was on interaction via the body..

Supporting New CollaborationsTwo $500 travel grants were awrded to support researchers developing new collaborations, targeting ARC Discovery proposal preparation.

Visiting International SpeakersProfessor Catherine Pelachaud and Professor Gary Marsden were nominated by the Priority Area to attend SummerFest and to present all-day tutorials. Professor Sharon Oviatt visited institutions in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide in March as part of the HCSNet International Visiting Speaker Program; Professor Oviatt is one of the world’s leading researchers on psychological aspects of human-computer interaction, and in particular, on issues related to cognitive load in HCI.

I enjoy working with HCSNet and find their workshops extremely interesting and fruitful in terms of building research collaborations. One of the workshops led to a joint 2008 ARC DP application by three previously unconnected researchers from three different universities. In 2008 we organised a ground-breaking 'Joint HCSNet/EII Workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access', connecting two previously unconnected ARC research networks. HCSNet funding came from the Effective Interactive Interfaces Priority Area; on the EII side, funding was contributed by the EII taskforce on Mobile Information Access, co-ordinated by Christopher Lueg (University of Tasmania) and Jennie Carroll (then University of Sydney, now RMIT University) with Marta Indulska (University of Queensland). The workshop sparked a number of new opportunities for cross-disciplinary collaboration that are currently being explored.

Christopher LuegUniversity of Tasmania

3.1.2 Human Communication Disorders Leaders: David Copland and Max Coltheart

This priority area focuses on how we can better understand and manage human communication disorders, including difficulties with written language, by interfacing a broad range of disciplines including speech pathology, linguistics, speech science, philosophy, computer science, cognitive science, and neuroscience. Examples of recent areas of focus include computational modelling of language and communication, neuroscience and neurorehabilitation, and technological applications. Themes such as these provide a forum for progressing cross-disciplinary research and practice. Practical and theoretical solutions are sought by considering technological and scientific advances as well as engaging academic and industry partners.In 2008, the Priority Area made considerable progress in pursuing further interdisciplinary links through an increased number of workshops that were interdisciplinary at their core and through two workshops co-organised with other Priority Areas. Our workshops attracted a total of 189 participants in 2008.

Activities in 2008

Seminar by Professor Audrey Holland, University of ArizonaProfessor Audrey Holland presented a seminar entitled 'Virtual Clinicians in the Real Clinic' on 22nd August. The seminar described two examples of the use of 'virtual clinicians' in the treatment of adult aphasia.

Workshop on Future Computer Applications for Managing Communication Disorders This workshop was held on 19th September at the Centre for Clinical Research, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital, Queensland. The aim was to provide a state-of-the-art overview of computer applications for assessing and treating speech, language, and communication disorders, including current proven methods and potential future applications from other fields (e.g. computer-based language learning).

Workshop on Narrative and Communication DisordersHeld on 13th-14th September at the University of Melbourne, the aim of this workshop was to bring together Australian and international researchers with an interest in narrative and communication disorders to consider the current state of research in this area, with particular attention being paid to methodological issues, and to generating fruitful leads and directions for further research.

Workshop on the Neuroscience of Speech, Language and Communication This joint workshop with the Speech Priority Area was held on 10th October at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The workshop included a range of presentations on how neuroscientific techniques can be used for investigating speech and language in both healthy and disordered populations, and how this information might be used to constrain theories regarding communication.

Workshop on Voice and Voice Disorders Held on 4th December as part of SummerFest ’08 at the University of New South Wales, this was a joint workshop with the Speech Priority Area. The general theme was chosen to showcase the interdisciplinary nature of research in the area, and to draw in professionals working on such topics as the neurological disorders of voice and their management, the training of voice, and the role of voice-related information in communicating under difficult circumstances.

3.1.3 Next-Generation Search TechnologyLeaders: Diego Mollá Aliod and Robert Dale

Existing information retrieval systems effectively treat documents as unstructured bags of words. As Google and its competitors demonstrate, this approach works surprisingly well. At the same time, it is clear that human processors of information make use of a much deeper understanding of text than these systems exhibit: humans cannot compete with machines in terms of quantity, but their abilities far exceed those of machines when it comes to quality.

This priority research area focuses on how we can improve search engine technology by integrating more knowledge about the processing and understanding of language. This knowledge comes from a range of disciplines represented within HCSNet: for example, linguistics treats texts as richly structured objects that obey complex and interacting rules about language use, and natural language processing attempts to implement computational models that embody these ideas. How do we add this sophistication to information retrieval in a way that delivers better results? Are there insights from the cognitive sciences that can tell us how to build better tools for finding information? How do we extend these technologies when the data we are concerned with includes audio and video as well as text? These are the questions this Priority Area aims to address.

Activities in 2008

In 2008, the Priority Area expanded on the program of events held in the preceding year. The Next-Generation Search Technology Workshop has been consolidated as an annual event; in addition, the Priority Area organised two workshops which focused on specific types of search, and a workshop in

Audience participation during a presentation by Mike Twidale on ‘texting’ at the Joint HCSNet-EII Workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access held on 16-17 May at the ATP, Sydney. Left to right: Cécile Paris, Diego Mollá Aliod and Peter Eades

conjunction with the Effective Interactive Interfaces Priority Area and the ARC Research Network on Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII). The Priority Area also supported an international visiting speaker.

Visiting International Speaker: Dan FlickingerDr Dan Flickinger from the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, and Director of the LinGO (Linguistic Grammars Online) project, visited researchers in May and June and presented seminars at the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney, the Australian National University, and Macquarie University.

Professor David HawkingChief Scientist at Funnelback, and Adjunct Professor, Australian National University

I presented a paper on 'Promoting diversity in search results' at the HCSNet Next-Generation Search workshop in December, and very much enjoyed the ensuing discussion with academic researchers and students. The workshop was a great opportunity to meet researchers from around the country and to listen to presentations of their work. I was pleased to find a diversity of research areas represented, including information retrieval, natural language processing, and human computer interfaces. Our company, like other search companies, is interested in developments and opportunities in areas outside the narrowly defined field of 'search'. Two PhD students under my supervision attended and presented their work at the workshop; they benefited from the opportunity to present to and discuss with a knowledgeable but not narrow audience. At other events I have attended, local representatives of multi-national companies have presented little more than non-technical sales pitches. In contrast, I was impressed by the presentation by Brett Poole from Yahoo!7 at the NGS event, who included a lot of technical 'meat' and presented it in a stimulating way. Outside the formal sessions, NGS was a valuable opportunity to further joint work and discuss ideas with colleagues from other institutions. I am grateful for the opportunity to participate.

Joint HCSNet-EII Workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information AccessThis workshop, held on 16th and 17th May at NICTA's facilities at the Australian Technology Park in Sydney, was organised in collaboration with the HCSNet Effective Interactive Interfaces Priority Area and the Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII) ARC Research Network (Mobility and Accessing Information Infrastructures taskforce).

The Third Workshop on Next Generation Search Technology (NGS08)

The Third Workshop on Next-Generation Search Technology was held at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, on 13th November.

Workshop on Search on Biomedical Information (BioSearch08)This workshop, held on 30th November at the Queensland University of Technology, focused on the search and extraction of information from medical and biological resources.

SummerFest Workshop on Search and Information Extraction from Audio Data (AudioSearch '08)This workshop was held at the University of New South Wales on 5th December as part of SummerFest ’08. It brought together researchers and developers in all areas related to the extraction of information from sound recordings, retrieval of recordings, and their browsing and summarisation. The plenary keynote presentation was given by Malcolm Slaney (Yahoo! Research).

3.1.4 Perception and ActionLeaders: Rick van der Zwan and Kate Stevens

Evidence is accumulating that perception and action are linked. The process of producing actions and reading actions by others is one of neural mirroring or simulation. However, despite this coupling of perception and action in humans, perception and action are often considered as separate domains of research. Similarly, many machine systems have been designed exclusively for either perception or production, e.g., automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech synthesis, and computer vision. As these technologies advance, multimodal systems capable of both perception and production become more likely. How can knowledge emerging in the area of perception–action and motor simulation inform and enhance new multimodal technologies such as avatars, personal assistants, and embodied conversational agents? For example, can motor simulation be modelled? Can systems be programmed to develop expectancies and to anticipate actions and responses? The way that humans attend to particular information from the wide array available, and use this information to guide and

James Hogan, Dr Dina Demner-Fushman, Professor Limsoon Wong and Diego Molla-Aliod at the HCSNet Next-Generation Search Workshop on Search in Biomedical Information, QUT, 30th November 2008

direct action, is not only of theoretical and practical interest for studies on human behaviour and human movement, but also for human studies of when such behaviours go awry in such conditions as motor disorders, and studies of machine-based learning and robotics.

No one discipline will solve these complex problems. An integrated interdisciplinary approach is required, which includes input from a range of areas, including visual and auditory perception, motor control, motor learning, cognitive neuroscience, psycholinguistics, sign language, gesture analysis, non-verbal communication, music perception and performance, computer science, and signal processing.

Activities in 2008

The themes for this Priority Area in 2008 were to develop opportunities for individual members to broaden their skills bases and to explore perception and action relationships especially in high performance environments.

Two separate sets of skill-development opportunities were managed in 2008. The first took the form of a workshop held in July at the MARCS facility at the University of Western Sydney. Organised as a collaboration between the Speech Priority Area and the Perception and Action Priority Area, the workshop provided members with an opportunity to learn about Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS).

The second set of skills development activities were integrated into SummerFest ‘08 and included sessions on: enrolling in a PhD, life as a PhD student, time management, thesis writing, grant-writing, writing rejoinders, applying for postdoctoral appointments, giving presentations and publishing papers. The Perception and Action Priority Area also led the preparation of a collaborative research grant application to the Carrick institute..

Dr Anna Brooks, a member of the Perception and Action Priority Area, was awarded an HCSNet Early Career Researcher Award in 2008. Dr Brooks will spend two weeks working with Professor Jason Mattingley of the Queensland Brain Institute early in 2009 to investigate the neural correlates of gender perception from biological motion cues.

3.1.5 Speech

Leaders: Chris Davis and Denis Burnham

Rick van der Zwan and Mark Dras conducted a session on Giving Presentations at the Skills Sessions held during SummerFest ‘08.

Speech and its production and perception are complex events that evade easy understanding, and together have drawn linguistics, physiologists, psychologists, acousticians, cognitive scientists, engineers, and many more to their service. Despite its complexity, machines can now augment, describe, model, and simulate aspects of speech, and its perception and production, albeit via very different means than those used by humans. From the vast array of areas of study in speech, this Priority Area focuses on three particular issues.

The first concerns augmentation of speech perception ― via devices such as cochlear implants, hearing aids, and hearing technologies ― and brings together researchers in the biomechanics of hearing, signal processing, auditory and visual speech perception, and the perception and production of affect, pitch and prosody.

The second concerns the biometrics of speech and forensic speaker identification, emphasising the dynamic properties of the voice in the environment. This encompasses multiple research areas: forensic speech science, physiology of speech production, acoustics, linguistics, speech pathology, and statistical modelling.

The third concerns speech recognition science and technology, including both automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems, and human information processing; and topics ranging from the construction and use of speech databases for machine learning, through to models of human speech acquisition. This area brings together engineers, psychologists, linguistics, phoneticians, speech scientists, computer scientists, and cognitive scientists.

Activities in 2008

Workshops this year introduced the theme of 'techniques and tools'; and there was a concerted effort to engage with researchers across the different priority areas. To this end, the Speech Priority Area hosted a number of joint workshops with other priority areas.

Workshop on Voice and Voice DisordersHeld on 4th December, this workshop was organised jointly with the Human Communication Disorders Priority Area. There were thirteen presentations on subjects that ranged from the embodiment of voice to vocal training and vocal care.

Workshop on the Neuroscience of Speech, Language, and CommunicationThe rationale for this workshop, held on 10th October, was to bring together researchers who employ a range of neuroscientific techniques that permit exploration of the neural organisation of speech and language. These techniques include

Functional MRI (fMRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS), and Neuronal recording.

Workshop on Speech and Perception and ActionThis workshop, jointly organized by the Speech and Perception and Action Priority Areas, was held on 10th-11th July. The first day of the workshop focussed on the technique of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, and brought together Australian researchers who are currently employing or planning to employ this technique. The second day of the workshop, focusing on the theme of 'Action Perception: Perception and Performance', discussed the neural and behavioural mechanisms and other factors that mediate perception while people are acting, and perception–action coupling.

3.2 Connecting Researchers across Disciplines

Our primary aim as a Network is to connect leading and emerging researchers across disciplines. In 2008 we achieved this by the following means:

We hosted SummerFest ’08, our annual flagship conference which included a Summer School, a collection of Skills Sessions, a Speed Papers Session, and four workshops.

In addition to the SummerFest workshops, we hosted seven workshops under our Workshop Support Program during the year.

Our International Visiting Speakers Program hosted 15 seminars throughout the year, at 10 institutions.

We awarded two HCSNet Early Career Researcher Network Awards.

Our Collaborative Grant-Writing Support Program provided travel support for two participants to assist with the preparation of cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional grant proposals for the 2009 ARC Discovery Round.

A total of 359 individual HCSNet participants took part in these activities, all of which are described in further detail below. For each of the workshops, comprehensive reports by the organisers are available via the HCSNet website.

In 2008 we also provided support for two major events in the area of Human Communication Science: the international Interspeech Conference, held in Brisbane, and the Australian Linguistics Institute, held in Sydney. This support raised the profile of the Network, and provided opportunities for forging

Mae KitviteeUniversity of Sydney

Thank you for this year's SummerFest at the University of NSW! As an honours student with a linguistics background, I appreciated the opportunity to hear about different aspects of psychology and computing which gave me a better understanding of human communication science. I thought the Summer School courses were pitched at the right level, and the skills sessions were especially useful for me. I met some really

new international research collaborations. We also supported the Australian Computational Linguistics Olympiad (OzCLO). These activities are described further below.

3.2.1 SummerFest '08SummerFest is the premier event on the HCSNet Calendar. Held annually, SummerFest is an inspiring week-long conference designed to bring together participants from the broad range of disciplines that make up Human Communication Science. SummerFest '08, which was held from 1st to 5th December at the University of New South Wales, consisted of our annual two-day Summer School, our innovative speed papers session, four interdisciplinary workshops based around our five priority areas, and the introduction of a new component consisting of a collection of 'skills sessions'. These were highly informative sessions targeting different levels of career progression, ranging from those considering undertaking a PhD to grant writing workshops for those further on in their careers.

The aim of SummerFest is to bring together as many members of HCSNet as possible, to provide students with opportunities to hear the latest research and trends in the range of disciplines that make up HCSNet, and to allow researchers in HCSNet to meet fellow members, hear of their research interests, and begin to develop collaborations that cross discipline boundaries. SummerFest '08 attracted over 230 attendees, of whom over half were students (including 61 undergraduate students). Other participants included academics and faculty staff, international visitors, and researchers from industry.

Summer School The first two days of SummerFest consisted of an intensive Summer School. The Summer School was attended by graduate and senior undergraduate students, established and early career researchers, and industry representatives. The aim of the Summer School was to provide an opportunity for students and staff to hear about current topics and the latest research in disciplines that contribute to Human Communication Science.

In previous years, each summer school topic was covered in a three-hour session. In 2008, we changed the format to provide eight more intensive sessions of six hours in length. These were taught by leading international researchers from psychology, linguistics, computer science, language technology, speech science, music and engineering, as listed below.

Course Topic PresenterCognitive Neuroscience: The Study of the Mind and Brain

Marlene Behrmann

Designing Mobile Technology for Humans Gary Marsden

Language and Learning to Read Anne CastlesStatistical Natural Language Processing James CurranHearing by Eye Ruth CampbellEmotional Machines Catherine

PelachaudThe Rhythm and Melody of Language and Music

Anirudh Patel

Word Structure Laurie Bauer

Our ‘Meet the Presenter’ session, which we introduce into the program in 2007, was repeated at SummerFest '08. This is an evening session where students can interact with the presenters in an informal setting, either one-on-one or in a group environment, to ask questions or seek clarification on any aspects of the courses.

Presentation materials from these courses are all available on the HCSNet website; audio and video recordings of the presentations are also being made available online.

Skills SessionsThe morning session of the third day of SummerFest saw the introduction of skills sessions for members at different levels of career development. Presenters shared practical advice on the following areas of research career development:

Enrolling in a PhD Program How to Write a Thesis How to Manage Your Supervisor Life as a PhD Student Time Management Giving Presentations How to Publish a Paper How to Get a PostDoc Writing Grant Proposals and Rejoinders

The sessions targeted members ranging from undergraduate level through to established faculty and researchers.

Speed PapersThe afternoon session of the third day of SummerFest consisted of our ever-successful speed papers session, following the formula we had developed for the previous SummerFests in 2005, 2006 and 2007. In this format, speakers are given four minutes to present the essence of a research idea, and the audience use specially printed feedback forms to provide input to the speakers. The format is designed to provide an easy way for HCSNet members to get to know one another’s research interests and expertise, to encourage discussion of big questions in Human Communication Science, and to facilitate new collaborations and interdisciplinary or risky projects. In

Daniel Angus (UQ), Bronson Harry (UWS) and Nathan Perry (UWS) at the HCSNet Summer School, UNSW, 1st-2nd December 2008

Students Mary Broughton (UWS), Jette Viethen (Macquarie University) and Pawel Mazur (Macquarie University) jointly gave a presentation entitled “Life as a PhD Student” at the SummerFest Skills Session held at UNSW on 3rd December 2008.

total, an unprecedented 39 speed papers were presented during the half-day session. A review of the evaluation forms completed by attendees at the conclusion of SummerFest showed that the speed paper component is considered to be an almost essential part of SummerFest, with attendees gaining great benefit from the cross-disciplinary interaction.

The fourth and fifth days of SummerFest consisted of four specialist parallel workshops:

A Workshop on Search and Information Extraction from Audio Data

A Workshop on Designing the Australian National Corpus A Workshop on Embodied Interaction in Mobile, Physical

and Virtual Environments A Workshop on Voice and Voice Disorders

These workshops are described in detail in Section 3.2.2.

Keynote SpeakersOver the five days of SummerFest, we hosted four international keynote speakers: Dr Malcolm Slaney, Yahoo Research, California, USA; Professor Nancy Ide, Vassar College, New York, USA; Professor Catherine Pelachaud, CNRS, France; and Professor Paul Foulkes, University of York and JP French & Associates, UK. Keynote addresses were also delivered by two Australian speakers: Professor Pam Peters, Director of the Dictionary Research Centre and Style Council Centre; and Dr Steve Cassidy, a member of the Executive of the Australian Speech Science and Technology Association.

Social ActivitiesAs in previous years, social activities were an important part of SummerFest '08; these gave everyone the opportunity to informally meet other attendees and discuss their areas of interest and potential collaborations. The Welcome Reception on the first evening gave all attendees a chance to get to know each other and prepare for the week ahead. On the Tuesday evening attendees were given the opportunity to meet our Summer School presenters and talk in a more informal setting; the SummerFest evaluation forms indicated that this was a very popular event. The Conference Dinner was held on Wednesday at the Australian Jockey Club at Randwick, with the ceilidh dancing proving a great crowd-pleaser.

Review and FeedbackA review of the evaluation forms completed by delegates at the close of SummerFest '08 indicated that many attendees intend to pursue contacts from the various Summer School courses, Speed Papers session and workshops either via follow-up meetings or possible joint/collaborative grant applications. Delegates were particularly pleased to be able to attend presentations given by our distinguished Summer School presenters and SummerFest keynote speakers. There was also

Robert Dale welcomes delegates at the SummerFest Reception

praise for the format and organisation of the conference, with the new Skills Sessions being particularly well received.

Professor Marlene Behrmann

Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA

I spent an exhilarating day teaching and interacting with roughly 100 students, faculty and researchers at SummerFest ‘08. The morning lecture I delivered served as a survey of the fundamentals of the burgeoning field of Cognitive Neuroscience and the afternoon provided for more in-depth coverage of the psychological and neural mechanisms subserving face recognition. This latter focus was used as a model to illustrate the nature of scientific questions addressed in this field, the methods that are available for usage, and the type of answers one can get in this domain. The participants were highly engaged and enthusiastic, making my job easy. I also had occasion to speak to many of the participants during the breaks and at other occasions during SummerFest, and I gleaned much from them about their own educational and research experiences. The organization of the event was excellent and all arrangements and logistics were seamlessly dealt with. The format of the summer school courses is outstanding; this type of mechanism, exposing learners across all levels of education (from undergraduate to professors), is a valuable and unique conduit for delivering the latest information in the field.

3.2.2 Workshops Held in 2008

HCSNet-EII Joint Workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access On 16th and 17th May, HCSNet jointly organised a workshop with the ARC Research Network on Enterprise Information Infrastructure (EII), specifically with the EII taskforce on Mobile Information Access. The participating HCSNet Priority Areas were Interactive Interfaces and Next-Generation Search. The workshop was designed to foster cross-disciplinary interaction, and to extend links with another ARC Research Network; EII Network participants have previously attended HCSNet workshops and have developed joint projects with HCSNet researchers. The workshop was organised by Lawrence Cavedon and Diego Mollá Aliod of HCSNet; Christopher Lueg of EII; and Amanda Spink of QUT. Workshop topics included: information extraction; information retrieval via mobile devices; interactive question answering; ubiquitous computing; context-aware information access; dialogue systems for information access; cognitive and user modelling; and methodologies for user studies. There were 18 submissions accepted for presentation at the workshop, as well as three high-profile speakers: Mike Twidale of the University of Illinois (supported by EII); Diane Kelly of the University of North Carolina (supported by HCSNet); and Kenton O'Hara of CSIRO/NICTA/HxI (late of HP Labs, UK). About 35 delegates attended the workshop, from disciplines such as natural language processing, intelligent

systems, speech science and technology, and information retrieval. A significant outcome of this workshop was new collaborations that resulted in new projects and grant applications, involving Adam Vogel (University of Melbourne), Dr Chetty (University of Canberra) and Ganesh Naik (RMIT University).

Workshop on Speech, Perception and ActionThis workshop was jointly organised by the Speech and Perception and Action Priority Areas. The first day focussed on the technique of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, and brought together Australian researchers who are currently employing or planning to employ this technique. The keynote speaker was Professor Jason Mattingley, University of Queensland and the Queensland Brain Institute; there was also a short presentation by Medilink Australia of the VISOR 3D Neuro Navigation system for TMS coil positioning. One of the outcomes of this day was the formation of a loose-knit Australian TMS research group. The second day of the workshop (focusing on Action Perception: Perception and Performance) discussed the neural and behavioural mechanisms and other factors that mediate perception while people are acting, and perception–action coupling. The keynote speaker was Dr Beatriz Calvo-Merino, University College London, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience with additional talks by Professor Catherine Best, MARCS Auditory Laboratories, UWS and Associate Professor Stephen Lord, Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute.

Workshop on Narrative and Communication DisordersThis workshop aimed to bring together Australian and international researchers with an interest in narrative and communication disorders, to consider the current state of research in this area, with particular attention being paid to methodological issues, and to generate fruitful leads and directions for further research. The workshop organisers were Lesley Stirling, Graham Barrington, Susan Douglas and Kerrie Delves. The intention was to take a truly interdisciplinary approach, involving speakers and participants from a range of areas covered by the broad domain of cognitive science. The background to the workshop was a recognition that the cognitive tasks involved in the production and comprehension of narrative are complex and have yet to be fully understood. Much narrative data has been collected and analysed in relation to populations with communication disorders, with the expectation that this genre holds promise in furthering our understanding of language and cognition and informing the development of therapeutic interventions; however, the potential of this approach has yet to be fully realized, and there is a sense amongst researchers in this area that there is an opportunity to explicitly identify obstacles to progress.

The 37 registered participants came from 20 institutions; three Australian states and four overseas countries (the UK, Japan, Germany and the US); and represented clinical and non-clinical

Diane Kelly, Amanda Spink and Chris Lueg at the HCSNet-EII Joint Workshop on Interactive and Ubiquitous Information Access held at the Australian Technology Park, Sydney on 16th-17th May 2008.

disciplinary homes including Psychology/Neuropsychology/Psychiatry, Linguistics, Speech Pathology, Education, Information/Computer Science and Anthropology. The workshop hosted four invited speakers, two via video-linked plenaries: Dr Olga Solomon (Research Assistant Professor, University of Southern California Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, Los Angeles), Dr Nan Bernstein Ratner (Professor and Chairman, Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences, University of Maryland at College Park), Dr Susan Leekam (Reader, Department of Psychology and Director, Child Development Research Unit, Durham University), and Dr Wan Ching (Steve) Ho (Research Fellow, Adaptive Systems Research Group, University of Hertfordshire). Participants represented a mix of researchers from clinical and non-clinical backgrounds and other interested parties (including a member of the Victorian Department of Education and a proofreader/editor).

Outcomes of the workshop included the constitution of a working group, and immediate development of an internet-based network of researchers via a ‘blackboard’ based community set up at the University of Melbourne. Other outcomes in progress include a DVD of proceedings and a special journal issue.

Workshop on Future Computer Applications for Managing Communication Disorders Organised by David Copland and Deborah Theodoros, this workshop aimed to provide a state-of-the-art overview of computer applications for assessing and treating speech, language, and communication disorders including current proven methods and potential future applications from other fields (e.g. computer-based language learning). New computer technologies may enable more intensive delivery of therapy than traditional modes, and may address the need for quick, objective and reliable measures of speech and language function that are clinically useful for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment monitoring. This workshop considered advances that have been made in the development of computer-based applications across a range of disciplines (e.g., virtual reality and speech recognition) that may be utilised in the management of both developmental and adult communication disorders. The workshop also provided a forum for interactions between a range of disciplines including speech pathology clinicians and researchers, computer scientists, linguistics, software developers, engineers, speech scientists, and cognitive psychologists. Thirty-eight participants attended. Invited speakers included Professor Ron Cole (Chief Scientist at Mentor Interactive and President of Boulder Language Technologies, a company that develops science tutors for elementary school children), who demonstrated virtual therapists using talking heads; Professor Valerie Hazan (University College London), who provided new insights into the implications of computer-based second-language learning for

the treatment of communication disorders; and Dr Rebecca Palmer (University of Sheffield), who demonstrated the use of speech recognition devices as environmental support for individuals with severe speech disorders.

The workshop involved leading national and international researchers from a wide array of disciplines, including speech pathology, cognitive science, electrical engineering, and speech science; software developers; and several PhD students from a range of backgrounds. Presentations covered new developments in speech recognition, computer-based environmental support, internet-based approaches to managing communication disorders, discourse and text analysis tools, practical approaches to computer-based recording of speech, and the extension of computer-based approaches to nonverbal gestures.

Outcomes of the workshop included (1) increased awareness of currently available 'virtual head' and discourse or text analysis tools for both clinicians and researchers to implement computer-based management of communication disorders; (2) planned international and national collaborations to develop computer-based treatments for speech disorders; and (3) potential incorporation of computer-based discourse analysis tools in teaching curriculum in speech pathology training programs.

Workshop on the Neuroscience of Speech, Language and Communication This was a joint workshop with the Speech Priority Area, organised by David Copland and Chris Davis. The advent of a range of neuroscientific techniques provides unprecedented opportunities to advance our understanding of the neural organisation of speech and language. This understanding may in turn provide critical insights into the functional architecture of this most complex of human faculties. Advances can be made in this field by investigating a variety of neurological populations, employing a range of neuroscientific techniques including: Functional MRI (fMRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET), Magnetoencephalography (MEG), Event-Related Potentials (ERPs), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS). This workshop presented a range of papers on how these neuroscientific techniques can be used for investigating speech and language in both healthy and disordered populations, and how this information might be used to constrain theories regarding communication. Keynote speakers included Professor Jean Francois Demonet (INSERM, Talouse, France), Professor Greg Hickok (UC Irvine, USA) and Professor John Hodges (Prince of Wales Medical Research Institute, Sydney). The meeting also provided a forum for Australian researchers in the field to present their current work and provided an overview of the current national capacity for speech and language neuroscience research. Outcomes of the workshop include potential interstate research collaborations,

and initial planning for an international neuroscience training course to be organised by HCSNet.

NGS08 : The Third Workshop of the HCSNet Next-Generation Search Technology Priority AreaThe successes of the NGS06 and NGS07 Workshops motivated the Priority Area to organise NGS08, the Third Workshop in Next-Generation Search Technology, which was held at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, on 13th November. The workshop was co-located with the 15th String Processing and Information Retrieval Symposium (SPIRE), and the presentations included a wide range of topics from research institutions and commercial companies. The two invited presentations were given by Brett Poole (Yahoo!7) and David Hawking (Funnelback), and there was representation from industry in the short presentations. Student participation in the workshop was significant: of the 17 short presentations, seven were by PhD students. Topics presented at the workshop included: Query-by-singing Music Retrieval; Human Factors in Visualisation for Improvement of Information Search; Investigating the Effect of Spam Results on User Experience; Improving Email Search and Task Management; and Promoting Diversity in Search.

BioSearch08: A Workshop on Search in Biomedical InformationThis workshop, held on 30th November at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, was collocated with the 19th International Conference on Genome Informatics in Brisbane (GIW 2008). The workshop focused on searching for and extracting information from medical and biological resources. This area of research and development has experienced very rapid growth in Australia in the last few years, and the workshop was a timely opportunity to gather together leading researchers in the field. The event included keynote presentations by Dr Dina Demner-Fushman (US National Library of Medicine) and Professor Limsoon Wong (National University of Singapore). The program included two one-hour keynote presentations and 16 short presentations. Approximately 30 delegates attended the workshop, including a number of international attendees from GIW 2008. Topics included: Ranked Search for Medical Systematic Reviews; Analysis of Bushfire Personnel’s Speech Transcriptions for Linguistic Cues of Cognitive Load; Cancer Stage Classification from Free Text Medical Reports using Ontologies; and Machine Learning and Question Answering from Clinical Information Systems.

Workshop on Search and Information Extraction from Audio DataHeld on 5th December as part of SummerFest ’08, this workshop brought together researchers and developers in all areas related to the extraction of information from sound recordings, retrieval of recordings, and their browsing and summarisation. Special emphasis was given to aspects related

to human–human and human–machine communication. The plenary keynote presentation was given by Malcolm Slaney (Yahoo! Research). Topics included: Extracting Performance Behaviours and Accuracy from Musicians using the Note-Time Playing Path; Direction Estimation using Acoustic Vector Sensors; A Technique for the Aural Recognition of Temporal Autocorrelation in Financial Market Time Series; and Extraction of Perceptual Formant Information from the Cochlear Model.

Workshop on Designing the Australian National CorpusThis workshop was held on 4th and 5th December as part of SummerFest ’08, and was organised by Michael Haugh. The workshop focussed on current developments and emerging possibilities in corpus construction and usage for researchers working in Human Communication Science. It brought together researchers with expertise in data representation and corpus building, as well as corpus annotation and interrogation, in a single forum in order to: (1) disseminate leading work on corpus construction and usage to the broader research community in Australia and thereby contribute to collective knowledge about data collection and representation; and (2) work towards the design and construction of an Australian National Corpus that is innovative in exploiting the full potential of the interface between language and technologies. There was a keynote address by Professor Nancy Ide (Vassar College), who is the Technical Director of the American National Corpus, and has published widely in the areas of computational linguistics and corpus construction; and keynote addresses by Professor Pam Peters, author of The Cambridge Guide to English Usage and The Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage (CUP) and Director of the Dictionary Research Centre and Style Council Centre; and Dr Steve Cassidy, co-author of Techniques in Speech Acoustics (Kluwer) and a member of the Executive of the Australian Speech Science and Technology Association.

Key issues raised at the workshop included the importance of making a distinction between the management of language data and the effective use of metadata; the call for the Australian National Corpus to encompass a diverse range of language data; the need to carefully explore the ethical and legal implications of making such data widely available; and the possibilities for using existing as well as emerging technologies to better mine language data and metadata. To further the development of the Australian National Corpus it was resolved that (1) full papers be sought from participants and published in the form of proceedings that will in turn form a clear statement of needs from future users of the Australian National Corpus; (2) a further workshop be held to explore legal and ethical issues relating to setting up the Australian National Corpus and to produce a protocol to guide future donations and management of data and metadata; (3) a language audit be conducted to ascertain what language data (and metadata) currently exists and could be donated to the corpus; and  finally (4) ways in which further funding for different elements of the Australian

National Corpus be obtained be further discussed by members of the Steering Committee of the Australian National Corpus.

Workshop on Embodied Interaction in Mobile, Physical and Virtual Environments This workshop was held as part of SummerFest '08 on 4th and 5th December. The workshop focused on interaction via the body, and featured sessions on: human–human interaction via speech and gesture; interaction with virtual characters; physical interaction with the environment; and collaboration via telepresence. The keynote speaker was Professor Catherine Pelachaud, one of the word’s leading researchers in the area of embodied conversational agents, or 'virtual humans'. Other invited speakers included: Barbara Kelly (University of Melbourne) and Alexis Tabensky (UNSW) on the role of gesture in human-human interaction; Marcus Foth (QUT) on cultural aspects of interaction with the physical environment; and Gregor McEwan (HxI/NICTA) on collaboration via telepresence.

The thought-provoking and entertaining workshop was attended by about 50 participants, and raised the possibility of further cross-disciplinary interaction. A follow-up event is planned for 2009 to further the topic of how current gesture research in linguistics and psychology can be applied to human-computer interaction. Future collaboration between Pelachaud and Australian HCSNet participants is currently being discussed.

Workshop on Voice and Voice Disorders This joint workshop with the Speech Priority Area was held on 4th December as part of SummerFest ’08, and organised by David Copland and Chris Davis. The general theme was chosen to showcase the interdisciplinary nature of research in the area, and to draw in professionals working on such topics as the neurological disorders of voice and their management, the training of voice, and the role of voice-related information in communicating under difficult circumstances. There were thirteen presentations on subjects that ranged from the embodiment of voice to vocal training and vocal care. The keynote speaker for this workshop was Paul Foulkes from the University of York, who spoke on 'The Criminal Voice'. The workshop was well attended, with 63 registered participants. One potential outcome is a planned collaboration concerning voice disorders in teachers and their assessment and management using tele-rehabilitation.

3.2.3 Seminars Supported in 2008HCSNet provides two seminar support programs: one which enables Australian-based researchers to present seminars at institutions in other parts of the country, generally to an interdisciplinary audience; and an International Visiting Speaker Program, which provides support for researchers visiting from overseas to speak at three different institutions in Australia. The

seminars presented under these programs are listed below. Related materials, including presentation slides, are available on the HCSNet web site.

International Visiting Speaker Program

Professor Audrey HollandProfessor Linda Worrall and the Communication Disability Centre, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, the University of Queensland, hosted a visit by Audrey Holland from Speech Language and Hearing Sciences at the University of Arizona on 22nd August. Professor Holland’s areas of expertise include working with adults who have aphasia and other neurologic communication disorders, and counseling individuals with disabilities. Professor Holland’s seminar, entitled 'Virtual Clinicians in the Real Clinic', described two examples of the use of virtual clinicians (computer-based talking heads) in the treatment of adult aphasia. While there is mounting evidence that speech and language therapy is optimal when delivered intensively, current face-to-face service delivery options do not allow for such frequent therapy. Virtual therapy may provide a means of providing more frequent therapy, and create an environment for enhanced recovery of communicative function in a range of populations. Virtual therapists are not currently employed in clinical speech pathology; but there is growing international interest in the potential use of virtual therapy as a means of supporting and augmenting other traditional modes of speech and language therapy. This seminar was attended by 43 individuals including PhD students, academics and clinicians.

Dr Dan FlickingerDr Dan Flickinger is a Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University, and director of the LinGO (Linguistic Grammars Online) project. He is an internationally-renowned expert on grammar engineering, deep linguistic processing and formal semantics within the field of Language Technology. Dr Flickinger visited HCSNet during May and June and presented the following seminars:

'Transparent Heads in English' on 2nd May at the University of Melbourne (hosted by Timothy Baldwin), and on 10th June at the Australian National University (hosted by Avery Andrews)

'Allies in Babel's Aftermath: Combining Deep Grammars with Statistics in Machine Translation' on 7th May at the University of Melbourne (hosted by Timothy Baldwin) and on 11th June at Macquarie University (hosted by Diego Mollá Aliod)

'Grammar Engineering and Linguistic Theory' on 12th June at the University of Sydney (hosted by Jane Simpson)

Dr Flickinger’s visit broadened the already well-established channels of research that exist between Melbourne and Stanford, and seeded future collaborative research opportunities. The visit was also a successful bridge-building exercise between the pockets of grammar engineering expertise that exist in Australia, and between those generally involved in deep linguistic processing of various descriptions.

Dr Markus GuheDr Rainer Wasinger and Ilya Anisimoff from the Centre for Language Technology, Macquarie University, hosted a visit to Australia by Dr Markus Guhe from the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, in October 2008. Dr Guhe's research interests are in the area of computational cognitive modelling, cognitive models of language, cognitive models of the foundations of mathematics, and cognitive models of affect and emotion. He is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh and is working on multiple projects related to HCI, namely JAST, iMAP, and Embodied Mathematics. The focus of his research falls under the Effective Interfaces priority area. During his visit Dr Guhe gave the following talks:

Centre for Language Technology, Macquarie University: 'Incrementality in language production', which introduced his computational model of conceptualisation for language production.

Clayton School of Information Technology, Monash University, and Centre for Language Technology, Macquarie University: 'Adapting referring expressions to properties of the task environment', which described his computational cognitive model of referring expression generation for a route description task.

In addition to these talks Dr Guhe also advised researchers involved in the ARC- and NHMRC-funded Thinking Head project at sites in Sydney and Adelaide, and explored the possibilities for future collaborative work and grant funding opportunities. Research students at Macquarie University in particular took advantage of his visit, seeking consultation from him for his expertise in referring expression generation and incremental language production.

Professor Valerie HazanAssociate Professor Jeesun Kim from MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney, hosted a visit to Australia by Professor Valerie Hazan from the Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences at UCL (UK) in September 2008. Professor Hazan’s research is in three distinct areas: (a) second-language perception (audiovisual perception and the impact of auditory/visual training); (b) speech perception in children and adults with specific reading difficulties; and (c) within- and cross-speaker variability and its impact on speech perception. These themes fall within two of

HCSNet’s Priority Areas: Speech and Human Communication Disorders. During her visit Professor Hazan gave the following talks:

MARCS Auditory Laboratories, University of Western Sydney: ‘Audiovisual speech perception in L2 learners’, which reviewed her work on the audiovisual perception of native and non-native L2 phonetic contrasts.

Language and Cognition Research Centre, University of New England, Armidale, and Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University: ‘Clarifying the speech perception deficits of children and adults with specific reading difficulties’. In this talk, Professor Hazan presented data from a recently-completed three year research project. She also had the opportunity to visit both research centres.

At the HCSNet Workshop on Future Computer Applications for Managing Speech and Language Disorders, held at the Centre for Clinical Research, Royal Brisbane and Womens Hospital, Herston, Professor Hazan gave a keynote presentation entitled ‘Computer-based perceptual training: implications for second-language learning and clinical applications’, where she had the opportunity to meet Australian researchers working in clinical areas.

Professor Hazan spent six weeks at MARCS Auditory Laboratories. During this time, she set up, in collaboration with Associate Professor Jeesun Kim and Associate Professor Chris Davis, a new study on the perception of audiovisual speech, and held discussions with MARCS researchers with common research interests. She also explored with MARCS staff the possibility for future collaborative work and grant funding opportunities. Professor Hazan also had discussions with HCSNet coordinators about the kinds of activities and initiatives that are likely to best promote integration and collaboration across sub-disciplines.

Professor Sharon OviattProfessor Oviatt, Incaa Designs, Washington, is one of the world’s leading researchers on psychological aspects of human-computer interaction, and in particular, on issues related to cognitive load in HCI. Professor Oviatt’s visit to HCSNet provided an excellent opportunity for this knowledge to be shared with the local research community, and provided a platform for cross-disciplinary researchers to meet and explore collaboration opportunities. Professor Oviatt gave the following presentations:

IDEA Lab, University of Melbourne, on 3rd March (hosted by Frank Vetere): Human-Centered Design Meets Cognitive Load Theory: Designing Interfaces that Help People Think.

Professor Sharon Oviatt, Incaa Designs, Washington, at the Australian Technology Park, Sydney, in March 2008

University of Queensland, St Lucia Campus, Brisbane, on 4th March (hosted by Penny Sanderson): Implicit User-Adaptive System Engagement in Speech, Pen and Multimodal Systems.

NICTA, Australian Technology Park, Sydney, on 5th March (hosted by Fang Chen): Human-Centered Design Meets Cognitive Load Theory: Designing Interfaces that Help People Think.

Professor Oviatt also visited researchers at the University of New South Wales and the CSIRO ICT Centre.

3.2.4 HCSNet Early Career Researcher Network AwardsIn 2008, the Network further promoted its annual HCSNet Early Career Researcher Network Awards. The awards are designed to provide opportunities for new researchers to build professional networks and high-level research collaborations, by providing financial support for an Australasian-based ECR in each of our five priority areas to spend a block of time (two weeks or longer) at an Australian research laboratory, university department or other facility with an interest in human communication. The proposed visit should be designed to develop knowledge or a skills base, build professional networks, and provide an opportunity to collaborate with experts in the field. Longer-term goals to be encouraged are joint publications involving the ECR and the host institution, and/or presentation of a joint paper at an international conference and publication in the corresponding conference proceedings. In 2008, the recipients of the HCSNet Early Career Researcher Awards were Dr Anna Brooks from the Department of Psychology, Southern Cross University, and Dr Michael Haugh from the School of Languages and Linguistics, Griffith University. These awards will be taken up in the first half of 2009, with Anna visiting Professor Jason Mattingley at the Queensland Brain Institute, and Michael visiting Diego Mollá Aliod and Steve Cassidy at Macquarie University's Centre for Language Technology.

3.2.5 HCSNet Collaboration SupportINTERSPEECH 2008HCSNet was a major sponsor of Interspeech 2008 held in Brisbane at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre from 22nd–26th September. The conference was opened by Professor Janice Reid, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney. In addition to a Welcome to Country by the traditional landowners, there was also a 'welcome to language' (Australian English) by Professor Andy Butcher and Dr Felicity

Dr Anna Brooks participating in an EEG study designed to investigate the neural correlates of attentional blink

Cox , so that the close to 900 registrants were quickly drawn into the prevailing linguistic environment.

The first day was tutorial day; there were six tutorial sessions covering a range of topics of direct relevance to HCSNet members, listed below.

[Mel:Add to this table column headers 'Presenter' and 'Tutorial Topic']Zheng-Hua Tan, Miroslav Novak

Speech Recognition on Mobile Devices: Distributed and Embedded Solutions

David Grayden History, Hardware and Sound Processing for the Bionic Ear

Alain MarchallModelling speech production: Insights from speech errors and neurogenic speech disorders

Anne Cutler, Roger MooreSpeech Recognition by Mind and Machine

Geoffrey Stewart Morrison, Yuko Kinoshita, Daniel Ramos

Forensic Speaker Comparison-Likelihood Ratios — As Not Seen on TV

Robert DaleVoice User Interface Design in Commercial Speech Applications

Over the next four days, there were 775 papers presented on the usual range of speech-related topics in engineering, behavioural, and linguistic areas. Each day began with a keynote address, with speakers from Japan, Spain, and the USA, as shown below.

[Mel:Add to this table column headers 'Keynote Speaker' and 'Topic'] Hiroya Fujisaki, University of Tokyo

In Search of Models in Speech Communication Research

Abeer Alwan, UCLA Dealing with Limited and Noisy Data in ASR: A Hybrid Knowledge-based and Statistical Approach

Joaquin Gonzalez-Rodriguez, Universidad Autonoma de Madrid

Forensic Automatic Speaker Recognition: Fiction or Science?

Justine Cassell, Northwestern University

Modeling Rapport in Embodied Conversational Agents

As a major sponsor of the event, HCSNet had an exhibition booth active throughout the conference, and this attracted interest from both local and international registrants. Of particular interest was an interactive demonstration of 'the Thinking Head', a product of the Thinking Systems grant spawned by HCSNet collaborators. Many corridor conversations

between HCSNet members at the conference were observed, so we hope that this is reflected in further grant successes for the HCSNet community.

Australian Linguistics InstituteHCSNet was a major sponsor of the 2008 Australian Linguistics Institute (ALI), which was held from 7th–11th July at the University of Sydney. ALI was opened by the Vice Chancellor Elect, Dr Michael Spence, who spoke about the important place of linguistics in universities. ALI consisted of 21 intensive courses of 7.5 hours duration each, offered by local and international speakers, and attendees could also take part in an Indigenous languages institute, sponsored by the Koori Centre. HCSNet sponsored five courses, on: psycholinguistics (Anne Cutler, Max Planck Institute of Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, and MARCS, University of Western Sydney); first language acquisition (Rosalind Thornton and Stephen Crain, MACCS, Macquarie University); computational linguistics (Robert Dale and Mark Dras, Macquarie University); sociophonetics (Jennifer Hay, University of Canterbury); and quantitative methods (Carsten Roever, University of Melbourne). The approximately 140 attendees included undergraduate and postgraduate students, Winter School students and staff, as well as researchers working in schools, Indigenous language centres and Government education departments, and student volunteers, who made an important contribution to the success of ALI. International participants were from Estonia, Germany, Hong Kong, Georgia, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the UK and the US.

Australian Computational Linguistics OlympiadIn 2008, as part of our new initiatives directed at students, HCSNet provided financial support for the Australian Computational Linguistics Olympiad (OzCLO), a contest in which high school students compete to solve interesting linguistic problems from dozens of the world's languages and learn about the richness, diversity and systematicity of language, while exercising natural logic and reasoning skills. OzCLO is an initiative of the Australasian Language Technology Association, being driven by Dominique Estival in conjunction with academics at Macquarie University, the University of Sydney, and the University of Melbourne, based on the model of the North American Computational Linguistics Olympiads (NACLO). Linguistics Olympiads have been held in Eastern Europe since 1965 and currently there is an International Olympics Olympiad, with teams from 11 countries participating in 2008. Our financial support made it possible to run the first OzCLO, which was held in Melbourne and Sydney. The three winning teams from the State Rounds in both states competed to solve problems in Icelandic agreement, Finite State Automata, Mayan hieroglyphs, Manam Pile directionals, and spectrograms of English in the National Round in August. Competitors ranged from Year 9 to Year 12, and came from both state and private

The top three teams from OzCLO 2008

schools. The competition was a huge success among students and teachers, and a lot of fun for all involved.

3.3 Interdisciplinary TrainingOne of the key goals of HCSNet is to facilitate and enhance the training and development of new researchers in Australia. There are four ways in which HCSNet provides access to first rate teaching in specialist topic areas and broader disciplines: Workshops, Summer School courses, training awards, and resources.

During 2008, 10 workshops were organised under the auspices of HCSNet. One criterion for assessing HCSNet workshop proposals requires that there is support for students to attend and opportunities for them to present their research. For example, in the HCNet Workshop on Workshop on Speech, Perception and Action, of 53 participants, 25 were students.

For a fourth year, the HCSNet Summer School has presented cutting-edge research from leading international researchers. Topics in 2008 covered Cognitive Neuroscience; Designing Mobile Technology for Humans; Language and Learning to Read; Statistical Natural Language Processing; Hearing by Eye; Emotional Machines; The Rhythm and Melody of Language and Music; and Word Structure. SummerFest '08 incorporated eight six-hour summer school sessions given by presenters from the USA, Europe, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. The Summer School included a 'Meet the Presenter' session and, over two days, attracted 167 attendees of whom over 119 were students.

In 2008, we actively recruited new HSCNet student members from the undergraduate population. Our reasoning was that, if HCSNet is to nurture research interests in Human Communication Science at honours and doctoral level and in industry, then the earlier the contact with HCSNet, the better. To this end, we commissioned the production of a three-minute promotional video. The video was designed to advertise Human Communication Science, its interdisciplinary scope, and the upcoming HCSNet SummerFest. The video showcased research topics from each of the HCSNet Priority Areas, included testimonials from students who had attended HCSNet events, and was distributed via our website, in lectures, and on YouTube. A CD containing the video is distributed with this report.

The undergraduate student recruitment drive led to 58 undergraduates attending the Summer School and other SummerFest events.

An innovation in SummerFest ’08 was the inclusion of Skills Sessions designed especially for a range of audiences,

SummerFest ’08 delegates at Professor Marlene Behrmann's Summer School course entitled ‘Cognitive Neuroscience: The study of the mind and brain'.

including: undergraduate students who might be thinking about enrolling in a PhD; current PhD students wondering about future directions; and postdoctoral fellows and early career researchers. Topics included: Enrolling in a PhD Program; How to Write a Thesis; How to Manage Your Supervisor; Life as a PhD Student; Time Management; Giving Presentations; How to Publish a Paper; How to Get a PostDoc; and Writing Grant Proposals and Rejoinders.

Two ECR Placement Awards were announced in December 2008. These awards are designed to provide opportunities for new researchers to build professional networks and high-level research collaborations. The awards provide financial support for recipients to spend a block of time at an Australian research laboratory, university department, or facility with interest in human communication. In 2008, awards were made to: Dr Anna Brooks, Southern Cross University, to spend time at the Queensland Brain Institute; and Dr Michael Haugh, Griffith University, to work at the Centre for Language Technology, Macquarie University.

Resources from Summer Schools and Skills Sessions, including slides and digital footage, are available from the HCSNet website.

Training and development plans for 2009 include another round of ECR and Graduate Student Placement awards, the introduction of Technical Training Tutorials together with opportunities for placements associated with particular methods and/or equipment available within the Network, and a fresh and stimulating program of interdisciplinary Workshops and Summer School courses.

3.4 Exploiting Previously Unrecognised IntersectionsAs noted above, our identification of five Priority Research Areas has been a key step in exploiting previously unrecognised intersections between research areas and subdisciplines, and we expect the activities of the Priority Areas to bear fruit beyond the lifetime of the Network itself. The cross-disciplinary attendance at every one of our events is evidence that the Network is achieving its goal of bringing together researchers across disciplinary divides. We would like to point to concrete evidence of real interdisciplinary research outcomes, in terms of both publications and funded research, but there are no mechanisms that make it easy to gather such information. In lieu of such mechanisms, we list on the HCSNet website and in the appendices to this report all related ARC Discovery Program grants awarded to HCSNet members in 2008 and 2009. It is not possible to determine conclusively whether these would have happened without HCSNet’s existence, or the extent to which their planned research content has been influenced by HCSNet,

and so the Network cannot claim credit for these; but informal readings from our members clearly indicate that HCSNet's activities have often had an impact on individual research agendas. The increasing participation of industry-based members in our workshops is, we suspect, a direct consequence of the more focused approach that our Priority Area structure provides; we expect to see collaborations develop as a result of these meetings.

3.5 Making Visible a Network of ExpertsOur principle mechanisms for providing visibility for the breadth of expertise involved in the Network are our website and our weekly electronic newsletter.

3.5.1 The HCSNet WebsiteOur website, at www.hcsnet.edu.au, provides a wide range of information about the Network and its activities, but most importantly provides profiles of our 1370 members via an easily searchable database. Network participants are encouraged to keep their profiles up to date; each profile includes a short description of the participant’s area of research expertise. The website thus serves as a broad information source on Human Communication Science and on Australian skills and experience in the area.

Apart from our database of participants, our website also hosts an events database in which we maintain information about conferences and workshops of potential interest to participants in the Network. At the end of 2008, the events database had accumulated and made available information on over 1300 events of interest to researchers in Human Communication Science.

The website also serves as a repository for information about HCSNet sponsored events. Where possible, we try to make available via the website the presentations made at workshops and seminars, and any other material of relevance.

New pages on the website in 2008 include a page listing ARC Discovery grants awarded to HCSNet members, which began with 19 Discovery grants awarded in 2007, and a resources page for HCSNet video and audio resources.

Our jobs page, which lists job advertisements in Human Communication Science, serves to highlight the breadth of disciplines that span the Network and provides a repository of useful information for undergraduate students, senior high school students, and careers advisors.

The website's listing of research laboratories, groups and centres represented within HCSNet, a list we maintain as a means of encouraging interdisciplinary and inter-institutional collaboration and to assist with the implementation of the new HCSNet Early Career Researcher and Graduate Student Placement Awards, contained 21 entries by the end of 2008.

In 2008 we created a whole new website specifically for our flagship event, SummerFest. This website served over 57,000 page views in about 7,000 visits. The website included a host of resources for delegates, including:

video and audio promotional material and Summer School overviews;

an online membership signup form and SummerFest registration process;

business-card style attendee listings for the various sessions;

an automated speed paper submission system; an interactive venue map; detailed informational pages for each Summer School

course, workshop and skills session; downloadable papers; and various other informational resources such as schedules,

contact details, venue and accommodation information.

Other changes to the HCSNet website implemented during the year include the following:[Add bullets to this list]

the design and creation of a workshop process system for event organisers to use to submit expressions of interest in running an HCSNet event, and later to manage that event online through the HCSNet website;

the creation of an online submissions system for collecting abstracts, speed papers and posters from event participants;

an online review system for event organisers to use to review submissions;

a YouTube video channel for short videos about HCSNet events;

the acquisition of a large amount of storage space in order to host full-length video of workshops and seminars from SummerFest '08;

a revamp of our newsletter's style code to meet changing mail client standards;

an update of our site's navigation menu and archive layout; and

a large number of updates and improvements to back-end systems including our statistics pages, our newsletter system, email systems, membership management, and so on.

[Add Caption: The HCSNet Website front page, with the week's news stories]

[Mel:Add caption, 'The HCSNet SummerFest '08 home page']

3.5.2 The HCSNet Update NewsletterOur weekly electronic newsletter, HCSNet Update, has been distributed to all our members since May 2005. Each issue of the newsletter contains a small number of announcements of interest to the community, followed by a listing of upcoming conference and workshop deadlines, drawn from our events database; this latter aspect is deliberately designed to allow participants to learn more about events in fields other than their own, thus encouraging forays into other disciplines. In 2006, we introduced a participant spotlight feature into the newsletter, whereby each week, a selected participating researcher would be profiled as the lead item in the newsletter. In 2007 we further extended this with spotlights on research laboratories, groups and centres, showcasing six research laboratories over the year; and commenced spotlighting postgraduate students who are members of the Network.

The newsletter incorporates a mechanism for tracking how many members are reading it. This mechanism uses an external image to track newsletter reads. Currently the newsletter tracking averages around 250 unique readers each week and has tracked almost 27,000 total reads since tracking began in the last quarter of 2007. The total number of unique participants who have been tracked reading a newsletter since we have been gathering data exceeds 900. All these numbers are likely to be underestimates, since some email clients do not download the image.

3.5.3 Other Publicity ActivitiesThe Network’s activities are advertised via a tri-fold A4 brochure distributed at all our events; this brochure was updated in 2008. Our ‘brand’ is further promoted by pull-up posters displayed at all HCSNet events, and a collection of downloadable HCSNet logos and images for use by workshop organisers. We produce promotional material for all our events, including branded pens, notepads, conference bags and presentation folders. In 2008, we distributed our Annual Report to State and Federal Government Ministers with portfolios in disciplines covered by HCSNet, and an A3 poster designed to promote SummerFest was circulated to all relevant university departments in Australia represented in the Network. As part of our program of awareness-raising for the SummerFest '08 event, we produced a high-quality promotional video which was made available via YouTube and other web destinations, and utilised by participating members as a means of attracting their students to our events. A copy is distributed with this report. The Network issued several media releases promoting events over the year and received online and radio media coverage. See Appendix XX for HCSNet media releases and coverage in 2008.[Appendix number above missing]

3.6 Building Australia’s Reputation in Human Communication ScienceHCSNet has a strong and growing international visibility, and through this we make Australian research in the area visible to the outside world. Of the 1370 participants in the HCSNet database, XX are from countries outside Australia. Each week, these overseas researchers are reminded of HCSNet’s existence and activities via our weekly electronic newsletter. Over the last year, 25 international speakers have presented at HCSNet events in Australia, interacting with a wide range of HCSNet participants. A surprising number of hits on our web site — somewhere close to XX% — come from URLs outside the .au domain: see the detailed statistics in Appendix C.

[Some stats above missing]

Professor Catherine PelachaudUniversité de Paris 8, France

It was a great opportunity to give a Summer School course on Emotional Machines at SummerFest in December 2008. The audience was of high quality and raised interesting questions during the course. It was challenging to present it in front of such an audience. I also had the opportunity to attend the Workshop on Embodied Interaction, where I gave an invited talk on Virtual Humanoid as an Expressive Human-machine Interface. I very much enjoyed participating in this workshop, which enabled me to gain a broad overview of the research on human-machine interaction being conducted in Australia. During the week I enjoyed the informal gatherings that allowed us to get to know each other and discuss common research interests. I was also able to learn about the large Australian project on the Thinking Head and exchange ideas on this