The Young Female* Researchers in Speech Workshop (YFRSW) is a workshop for female* Bachelor’s and Master’s students currently working in speech science and technology. The workshop aims to promote interest in research in our field among women* who have not yet committed to pursuing a PhD in speech science or technology, but who have already gained research experience at their universities through individual or group projects.

*The workshop is open for marginalized genders, including women, as well as non-binary and gender non-conforming people who are comfortable in a space that is centered on women’s experiences in the speech science and technology community. We aim to offer an inclusive and accessible program. If you are unsure if this workshop is for you, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us!

YFRSW 2026 will take place ahead of Interspeech 2026 on September 26th in Australia. The workshop will be held entirely in person – we do not offer remote participation. 

The workshop will include panel discussions with PhD students and senior researchers in the field, student poster presentations, and a mentoring session. Student poster presentations should provide an overview of a current or planned research project in which the student is involved, with an emphasis on promoting discussion.

This year marks the 10th edition of the successful YFRSW series:

    1)  YFRSW 2016 at Interspeech in San Francisco/USA.  

    2)  YFRSW 2017 at Interspeech in Stockholm/Sweden.

    3)  YFRSW 2018 at Interspeech in Hyderabad/India 

    4)  YFRSW 2019 at Interspeech in Graz/Austria

    (No event took place in 2020 due to Covid-19.)

    5)  YFRSW 2021 (virtual) at Interspeech in Brno/Czech Republic

    6)  YFRSW 2022 at Interspeech in Incheon/South Korea

    7) YFRSW 2023 at Interspeech in Dublin/Ireland

    8) YFRSW 2024 at Interspeech in Kos/Greece

    9) YFRSW 2025 at Interspeech in Rotterdam/the Netherlands

Students who are accepted to the workshop will receive a grant to pay for their student Interspeech registration (at the early-bird light student rate) and to contribute towards their travel to the conference. While students who have previously attended the workshop are welcome to submit their work a second time, only first-time attendees are eligible to receive financial support. We are happy to welcome students who have an accepted paper at Interspeech 2026. However, we do not provide financial support in this case.

Please direct any questions to: 

youngfemaleresearchersinspeech@gmail.com

Committees

Co-chairs

• Ayushi Pandey (Karya.in, India)

• Leda Sari (Otter.AI, USA)

• Tuende Szalay (University of Sydney, Australia) 

Organizing committee

• Ariadna Sanchez (University of Edinburgh,UK)

• Iona Gessinger (Saarland University, Germany)

• Johannah O'Mahony (Whispp, The Netherlands)

• Poppy Welch (University of Southampton, UK)

• Sarenne Wallbridge (UK AI Security Institute)

• Snigdha Banik (Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India)

• Spyretta Leivaditi (Unicorn Labs, The Netherlands)

• Yuanyuan Zhang (TU Delft, The Netherlands)

Program committee

• Amelia Gully (University of York, UK)

• Badr Abdullah (Saarland University, Germany)

• Bence Márk Halpern (Nagoya University, Japan)

• Catherine Lai (University of Edinburgh, UK)

• Éva Székely (KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden)

• Isabel Trancoso  (INESC-ID & IST, University of Lisbon, Portugal)

• Jennifer Williams (University of Southampton, UK)

• Jeremy Steffman (University of Edinburgh, UK)

• Jingyao Wu (MIT, USA)

• Jorge Martinez (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

• Judith Dineley (King’s College London, UK)

• Korin Richmond (University of Edinburgh, UK)

• Linda Gerlach (Oxford Wave Research)

• Mary Baltazani (University of Oxford, UK)

• Mark Hasegawa-Johnson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA)

• Matt Coler (University of Groningen - Campus Fryslân, The Netherlands)

• Nina Markl (University of Essex, UK)

• Odette Scharenborg (Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands)

• Ondrej Klejch (University of Edinburgh, UK)

• Omnia Ibrahim (Alexandria University, Egypt)

• Peter Bell (University of Edinburgh, UK)

• Phat Do (University of Groningen - Campus Fryslân, The Netherlands)

• Rao Ma (Google Deepmind, USA)

• Shekhar Nayak (University of Groningen - Campus Fryslân, The Netherlands)

• Shinji Watanabe (Carnegie Mellon University, USA)

• Sebastien Le Maguer (University of Helsinki, Finland)

• Simon King (University of Edinburgh, UK)

• Sudarsana Reddi Kadiri (University of Southern California, USA)

• Tanvina Patel (Erasmus MC & TUDelft, DataQueue, The Netherlands)

• Vass Verkhodanova (University of Groningen - Campus Fryslân, The Netherlands)

• Xiaoliang Wu (University of Southampton, UK)

• Wei Xue (Xi'an Jiaotong University, China)