Welcome

On behalf of the Organising Committee for the 10th Australian International Speech Science and Technology Conference I'd like to welcome you to Macquarie University. I hope that the next three days will be stimulating and rewarding.

Macquarie has been a centre for research in speech and language technology since the establishment of the Speech and Language Research Centre in 1967 by Arthur Delbridge. The laboratory started life in a disused cottage on the Macquarie campus with one technical officer. Since then it has expanded twice into laboratory premises, changing its name to the Speech, Hearing and Language Research Centre, reflecting the increasing presence of Audiology within the School.

More recently, the Language Technology group within the Microsoft Research Institute, led by Robert Dale, was absorbed into the Department of Computing forming the Centre for Language Technology. The primary focus of CLT has formed in the Computing Department with the primary focus of developing technology based on both spoken and written language.

In putting together the program for this conference we wanted to encourage the spirit of cross-disciplinary cooperation that has always been a part of the SST conference series. Two years ago, the Australian Language Technology Association held its one day workshop in conjunction with the Australian AI conference at the same time as SST. This year we have integrated the ALTW program with the first day of the SST conference hoping to maximise the opportunities for the Australian speech community to see what is happening in the Language Technology world. Along with the Workshop ALTA has organised a four day summer school which includes courses on speech and language processing which we hope will be of interest to many ASSTA members as well as those of ALTA.

Our meeting has been sponsored this year by a number of organisations and their support has made this varied program possible. ASSTA continues to underwrite the conference but this year has also funded the Summer School under its Research Event Award scheme. Our thanks also go to the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, DSTO, Appen, and VeCommerce and to Dominique Estival of DSTO for coordinating the sponsorship program.

I'd like to thank the people who have helped make this conference possible: Roslyn Green and the team from Macquarie Research Ltd., Felicity Cox, Sallyanne Palethorpe, Robert Mannell, Diego Molla, Ray Robinson and Lisa Stephenson. Thanks also to the organisers of the Australian Language Technology Workshop and Summer School.

Steve Cassidy
Conference Chair