It has been a long two decades since the first event of ISCA in Beijing 2000, and we are delighted to welcome our community back to China for 21st INTERSPEECH, and for the first time in Shanghai!

Artificial intelligence is transforming many aspects of our lives.  The ability to communicate using human language lie at the crux of machine intelligence.  The theme of INTERSPEECH 2020 is “Cognitive Intelligence for Speech Processing”. We hope to better understand how humans process the spoken language, to inspire and inform our research and development of the machine's cognitive abilities to process the spoken language.  INTERSPEECH2020 will bring together speech and language scientists, researchers, engineers and technologists from all corners of the world to vibrant exchanges of both theory and practice in this important field.

INTERSPEECH 2020 will be held in the Shanghai Convention Center between 25-29 October. Shanghai.  Shanghai is a very cosmopolitan city with an eclectic blend of Chinese with international cultures.  It is a most desirable venue to welcome the delegates of INTERSPEECH from all over the world!  There will also be a rich variety of satellite workshops taking place in the vicinity.

INTERSPEECH 2020 marks the 32th year of ISCA's scientific activities and community services, and the return of INTERSPEECH to China after two decades.  On behalf of our organization committee, I extend the warmest welcome to all of you to Shanghai for a wonderfully intellectual flagship event for speech science and technology!

From the Conference Chair and Co-Chairs
Helen Meng, Bo Xu and Thomas Zheng.