LITHME, the EU-funded research network includes all European countries plus a number of international partner countries, and is funded for four years, 2020-24. Over this period of time it is planned to include stakeholders to strike up a productive dialogue between academic researchers and industry. Academics will gain foresight of future technologies, while industry stakeholders will gain insight in the potential social and linguistic effects of their inventions.

As part of the LITHME management team and chairs of Work Group 1 on ‘Computational Linguistics’, Henrique Lopes Cardoso (FEUP) and Rui Sousa-Silva (FLUP) will host on 1-2 June 2022 a roadshow in Porto. This roadshow aims to further the links among the LITHME network, the industry, and the community by inviting companies to showcase their products and services. The roadshow will take place at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto.

This roadshow will focus on language technologies and human-machine interaction, which allow us to speak to and through technology, the software powering the human-machine era, and human integrated devices. This includes but is not limited to: innovative human-machine interfaces; machine translation and interpreting; machine sign language interpreting; text-to-speech, speech to text and speech-to-speech technologies; and virtual reality and augmented reality, among others.

Simultaneously, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities will host the LITHME Training School (30 May – 3 June), whose objectives are widening the knowledge of LITHME’s activities, bringing together trainees from across linguistics, language research, and language technology, providing intensive training on new and emerging interdisciplinary challenges and familiarizing trainees with unique technologies developed by our sponsors.

The Program will cover the following topics:

• 30 May: Language and Computation, Language Technology;
• 31 May: Language and Law, Language Rights;
• 1 June: Language Vitality and Endangerment, Technology-assisted Language Learning;
• 2 June: Language Ideologies, Language Variations and Change;
• 3 June: Language Professionals, Translation and Teaching of Languages

Participating Companies and further details about the event will be announced in the coming weeks @ https://lithme.eu/.

The initiative of U.Porto, which will start in the next second semester, intends to bring students closer to some of the main cultural institutions of the city. The collaboration with Casa da Música, Teatro Nacional S. João, Museu Nacional de Soares dos Reis and also with Jardim Botânico and Faculdade de Belas Artes, resulted in the creation of curricular units of transversal skills (3 ECTS), that the undergraduate and master students will be able to add to their basic training and enrich their career by experiencing the backstage of the artistic and cultural activity of Porto.

Music and Society will be the UC coordinated by Prof. Gilberto Bernardes, Assistant Professor of DEI/FEUP and Coordinator of the Specialization in Interactive Music and Sound Design of the Masters in Multimedia of U.Porto, in collaboration with Óscar Rodrigues from Casa da Música, and will be an opportunity to understand and explore music in different socio-cultural contexts, particularly in the classical context and in community intervention, and to reflect actively on the mission and challenges of the fabric of creative industries, with special focus on the branch of music creation.

The course will take place on Fridays, from 17:00 to 19:00, and will be held at FEUP and Casa da Música.

Applications are open until January 31st, and detailed information about these CU’s can be seen here and here.

Photo: Egidio Santos/U.Porto