[Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this Call For Participation]
Dear Colleague,
We are pleased to announce the launch of the "SAND - Speech Analysis for
Neurodegenerative Diseases" challenge, an international competition
aiming to revolutionize the diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases like
ALS.
Today, many diagnostic tools rely on subjective clinical scales. This
often delays the identification of early changes, postponing
intervention and treatment. Our goal is clear: to leverage the potential
of Artificial Intelligence and speech signal analysis to create
objective and non-invasive biomarkers.
The challenge includes two main tasks:
- Classifying subjects (diseased vs. healthy).
- Predicting how the disease worsens over time.
The top-scoring teams will have the opportunity to present their work at
the prestigious 2026 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech,
and Signal Processing (ICASSP) conference in Barcelona and publish their
contributions in the official conference proceedings, indexed in major
academic databases.
This is an invitation to researchers, professionals, and innovators in
these fields.
đź“… Important Dates:
- Registration and dataset release: September 1, 2025
- Submission closes: November 20, 2025
- Results announcement: December 2, 2025
For more information and to participate, visit the official website:
www.sand.icar.cnr.it
The SAND challenge is organized by ICAR-CNR - UniversitĂ degli Studi di
Napoli Federico II - UniversitĂ Luigi Vanvitelli
A particular thanks to the Fondazione DÂł4Health for its technical support.
