ELSNET-3

Type of project: European  |  Start date: 01/02/2000  |  End date: 31/01/2002

ELSNET operates as a European Network of Excellence for Human Language Technologies and aims at bringing together the key players in Language and Speech Technology, both from industry and academia, and at encouraging interdisciplinary co-operation.

ELSNET supports the HLT programme by offering a number of services and actions focusing on:

• the transfer of knowledge and expertise;
• evaluation;
• resources;
• best practice and standards;
• R&D roadmaps.

ELSNET already exists as a fully operational network, with around 140 key academic and industrial players as its members and this ensures broad support from the field.

The main aim of ELSNET-3 is to advance Human Language Technologies in a broad sense by building on the existing network an infrastructure which encompasses a cross-section of private and public research centres actively engaged in Language and Speech Technology research, development, integration or deployment. ELSNET’s role is to offer an environment that allows the optimal exploitation of available human and intellectual resources.

An important dimension that is fast becoming part of ELSNET’s vision is ‘internationalisation’, i.e. the establishing of links with institutions outside the EU (e.g. in the CIS countries, in the Far East and in the USA) in order to allow ELSNET to act on an global level.

The objectives of ELSNET-3 can be summarised by the ELSNET mission statement:

ELSNET is a Europe-based forum dedicated to Human Language Technologies. It operates in an international context and will consider, across discipline boundaries, all human communication research areas related to language and speech.

ELSNET aims at advancing the research and the development in Human Language Technologies in Europe, by bringing together the key players in the field and providing a proactive, open forum which will serve as a platform for:

• launching innovative actions;
• making analyses of the present, and developing visions for the future;
• fostering a common environment, comprising resources, standards and evaluation;
• for building, sharing and exploiting knowledge and expertise.