Had the pleasure of visiting Okko Räsänen’s lab at Tampere Univ. Gave a talk on our work on computational models of speech acquisition and served as the opponent in the PhD defense of María Andrea Cruz Blandón, an impressive body of work. Congrats to her & the group, a great place for research!

🚨 Open PhD Position – Grenoble, France 🚨

Join us at GIPSA-lab to explore how Speech Language Models can learn like children: through physical and social interaction. Think AI, robots, development 🧠🤖🎙️
Fully funded (3 yrs) • @cnrs.fr / @ugrenoblealpes.bsky.social
Details 👉 tinyurl.com/bde988b3

DevAI&Speech involves researcher and engineers from GIPSA-lab (CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes), Laboratoire de Psychologie et de NeuroCognition (Mathilde Fort), Tampere University, Inria, and Atos (6/6)

📢 Several fully funded PhD positions will be announced soon — but feel free to reach out already if you’re interested! (5/6)

🤖 embedding SpeechLMs in our humanoid robots and training them through natural interaction with humans
👶 better understand the underlying mechanisms of speech acquisition through experimental studies involving parents, children, and robots at Grenoble’s Babylab. (4/6)

Key goals include:
🧠 integrating knowledge of biomechanics in SpeechLMs
👁️ enabling SpeechLMs with multimodal input/output processing (3/6)

We’ll be developing Speech Language Models (SpeechLMs) that learn like children do: through multimodal sensory input (audio, images) and interactive experiences with both their speech production system and social environment. (2/6)

🚀 I’m excited to announce the launch of our new research chair DevAI&Speech (2025–2029), funded by the Grenoble AI Institute MIAI Cluster IA!

The project explores how human developmental processes can inspire more grounded and socially aware conversational AI (1/6).