IS2011 Student Event Report : ASR and Machine Translation

At the beginning of the discussion, Dr. Hermann Ney firstly introduced
himself and then asked others to introduce themselves in return. The
introduction included where one's home country is, what research one's
been doing on, and what one is interested to learn from this
discussion. Dr. Hermann Ney is very nice and patient to try to
understand everyone's work. At the same time he also gave lots of
comment and helpful guidance.
After the self-introduction part, we enjoyed the delicious food
together and discussed topics such as the trends of speech
application, the way to do research scientifically, and so on. One
important thing Dr. Hermann Ney mentioned was difference between doing
research in companies and academics. Due to the amount of resources
and different goals to achieve, the importance of performance and
efficiency can be varied a lot. As a student, I did not know this
difference can be huge in the past. Thanks to the discussion, I
learned a lot both from Dr. Hermann Ney and other students. Though
there was lots of different opinion during the discussion and not all
of them are agreed by everyone, the discussion was still worthy to pay
attention to. And I think this is just the reason why there should be
such discussion.
In the end of the discussion, Dr. Hermann Ney talked about the way to
do research scientifically rather than just blindly. I think this part
is especially useful for every student at the table, since this is
usually the most easily ignored thing for young researchers.
The time went very fast and soon the discussion came to an end. The
food was great and the discussion was inspiring. I think that everyone
learned something from the discussion more or less. Thanks to Dr.
Hermann Ney and others at the table, I had a very good experience. And
I wish there will be more such events in the future.

Report written by Yeh Ching-Feng