MSCA-PF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Signal Theory, Telematics and Communications.

Professor Iván López-Espejo, from the Department of  Signal Theory, Telematics and Communications at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF) in 2024 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (for more information about the 2024 call, please consult this link.

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 56,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and more than 6,000 members of staff, the UGR offers over 90 undergraduate degrees, 164 master’s degrees (8 of which are international double degrees) and 28 doctoral programmes via its 124 departments and nearly 50 centers. Accordingly, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has been awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the the institution’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. The UGR is also internationally renowned for its excellence in diverse research fields and ranked among the top Spanish universities in a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, and international funding.

The UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). The 2023 edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the 1-2 highest ranked University in Spain (http://sl.ugr.es/0dwJ), reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research. From the perspective of specialist areas in the ARWU rankings (http://sl.ugr.es/0bSp), the UGR is outstanding in Food Science & Technology (ranked in the 48th position in the world), Hospitality & Tourism Management (ranked between 51th-75th position), and in the areas of Mathematics and Library & Information Science, both of them ranked between 76th-100th position. A little lower in the ranking, the UGR also stands out in the areas of Biomedical Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering and Nursing, in which the UGR is positioned at the rank in the 101-150th position. Finally, Dentistry & Oral Sciences is positioned between 151-200th position.

Additionally, the UGR counts with 9 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list, most of them related to the Computer Science scientific area. It is also well recognised for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 76th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, the University of Granada is firmly committed to its participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last Framework Programme, Horizon 2020, the UGR obtained a total of 121 projects with a total funding of around €29,4 million. For the current Framework Programme, Horizon Europe, the UGR has obtained 74 projects, so far, with a total funding of almost €20 million.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group: 

The Group SigMAT (Signal Processing, Multimedia Transmission and Speech/Audio Technologies) is a Research Group of the Junta de Andalucía, code TIC-234. This Research Group was created in 2012 and it is composed of Faculty and Researchers from the Department of Signal Theory, Telematics and Communications of the University of Granada. The main objectives of the Group SigMAT can be summarized in the following lines:

• To research, innovate and develop speech technologies, e.g., speech recognition, speech coding and synthesis, and speaker recognition.
• Research and innovation in robust and secure multimedia communications techniques (voice, image and video), e.g., enhancement, robust transmission, biometrics, and anti-spoofing.
• Research in other fields of application of signal processing, such as ultrasonic non-destructive evaluation and proteomics.
• Development of applications related to speech technology.
• Consultancy on speech technologies.

URL: http://sigmat.ugr.es/ 

Project description:

The proposed Project consists of the research and development of acoustic distortion-robust voice control algorithms that can be deployed in hearing aids. These algorithms will be developed by means of keyword spotting, which can be understood as a subproblem of automatic speech recognition. Algorithms will be mostly based on machine learning/deep neural networks, and will be validated on both simulated and real hearing aid noisy speech data.

Thus, the goal of this Project is to contribute to substantially improve the life quality of hearing-impaired people with reduced fine motor skills who have a hard time manipulating the small buttons on the hearing aid, so they can use their voice instead. Voice control perfectly fits the trend of designing invisible, in-ear-canal hearing aids. Invisible hearing aids will contribute to increase their rate of use among people who do not wear hearing aids because of stigma and/or aesthetics reasons despite they need them. It is crucial to work towards this goal, since the World Health Organization foresees that 1 in 4 people will have hearing problems by 2050.

In addition, this Project might impact any application of keyword spotting, like voice control of in-vehicle systems and activation of voice assistants (nowadays, the number of voice assistant units exceeds that of world’s population). For example, in the latter case, more robust keyword spotting methods will reduce false alarms and miss detections, thereby mitigating privacy issues and improving users’ experience. All of this implies a societal impact reflecting the ambitions of a series of European Commission’s “Digital Society” policies like the “Digital Inclusion”, “Online Privacy and Safety” and “Language Technologies” policies.

Research Area:

☒ Information Science and Engineering (ENG)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor Iván López-Espejo (iloes@ugr.es): 

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)