Current Activities

• Editorial board member:
  
  • Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing since November 1, 2016
  • Guest Editor of the Special Issue on "Next Generation Computational Paralinguistics" with Björn Schuller, Anton Batliner, Alessandro Vinciarelli, Felix Burkhardt, and Rob van Son, Computer Speech and Language, ELSEVIER, 2013
  • Guest Editor of the Special Issue on "Broadening the View on Speaker Analysis" with Björn Schuller, Anton Batliner, Florian Schiel, and Jarek Krajewski, Computer Speech and Language, ELSEVIER, 2012
  • Guest Editor of the Special Issue on "Paralinguistics in Naturalistic Speech and Language" with Björn Schuller and Anton Batliner,  Computer Speech and Language, ELSEVIER, 2011
  • Guest Editor of the Special Issue on "Sensing Emotion and Affect - Facing Realism in Speech Processing" with Björn Schuller and Anton Batliner, Speech Communication, ELSEVIER, 2010

• Organization of special sessions:
  
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2018 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge (ComParE 2018) - Atypical & Self-assessed Affect, Crying & Heart Beats
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2017 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge (ComParE 2017) - Addressee, Cold & Snoring
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2016 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge (ComParE 2016) - Deception, Sincerity & Native Language
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2015 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge (ComParE 2015) - Degree of Nativeness, Parkinson's & Eating Condition
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2014 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge (ComParE 2014) - Cognitive & Physical Load
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2013 Computational Paralinguistics Challenge (ComParE 2013) - Social Signals, Conflict, Emotion, Autism
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2012 Speaker Trait Challenge - Personality, Likability, Pathology
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2011 Speaker State Challenge - Intoxication & Sleepiness
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2010 Paralinguistic Challenge - Age, Gender & Affect
    
  • Co-organizer of the INTERSPEECH 2009 Emotion Challenge
    
  • Co-organizer of 'Recognition of Non-prototypical Emotion from Speech: The Final Frontier' (Special Session at ACII 2009)

• Organization of Workshops and Conferences:
  
  • INTERSPEECH 2015 (publication chair)
  • SLaTE 2015 (general chair)
  • WOCCI 2012 (chair)

• Member of the program committee:
  
  • WOCCI 2009, WOCCI 2012

• Reviewer for research proposals/grants:
  • Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)

• Reviewer for journals:
  • Elsevier/ISCA Speech Communication
  • Elsevier Computer Speech and Language
  • Elsevier Neurocomputing
  • IEEE Intelligent Systems
  • IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing
  • IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing
  • IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering
  • IEEE Transactions on Multimedia
  • IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics
  • IEEE Signal Processing Letters
  • EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing (JASMP)
  • Advances in Human-Computer Interaction (AHCI)
  • International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (IJHCI)
  • MDPI Open Access Journal Sensors
  • Radioengineering
  • Springer Cognitive Computation
  • Springer Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces (JMUI)

• Reviewer for conferences and workshops: 
  • ASRU 2011, ASRU 2013
  • ACII 2009, ACII 2011, ACII 2013, ACII 2017
  • AVEC 2011, AVEC 2012, AVEC 2013, AVEC 2014, AVEC 2015, AVEC 2016, AVEC 2017
  • EMNLP-CoNLL 2012
  • EUSIPCO 2008
  • GCPR 2014, GCPR 2017
  • Interspeech 2009, Interspeech 2010, Interspeech 2011, Interspeech 2012, Interspeech 2013, Interspeech 2014, Interspeech 2015, Interspeech 2016, Interspeech 2017, Interspeech 2018
  • ICASSP 2010, ICASSP 2011, ICASSP 2012, ICASSP 2013, ICASSP 2014, ICASSP 2015, ICASSP 2016, ICASSP 2017, ICASSP 2018
  • ICMI 2013, ICMI 2014, ICMI 2018 EAT Challenge
  • ICPR 2014
  • ICPRAM 2012, ICPRAM 2013
  • Pervasive Health 2010
  • SPECOM 2017, SPECOM 2018
  • SLaTE 2017
  • TSD 2011, TSD 2012, TSD 2013, TSD 2014, TSD 2015, TSD 2016, TSD 2017, TSD 2018
  • WOCCI 2009, WOCCI 2012, WOCCI 2014, WOCCI 2016
  • WS³P

• Member of the Faculty Council of the School of Engineering of the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg from 10/01/2007 to 09/31/2009, from 12/01/2009 to 09/31/2011, and from 10/01/2015 to 09/30/2019
• Member of the Admission Committee for the master's course Medical Engineering (from 04/11/2018  to 04/10/2021)
• Teaching position since 2004

since 2008

• Researcher at the Chair of Pattern Recognition (Computer Science Department 5) at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• 'Akademischer Rat' since April 1, 2009, 'Akademischer Oberrat' since August 6, 2018
• Head of the group 'Medical Image Segmentation' since May 2013
• Habilitation (Dr.-Ing. habil.) on January 24, 2018
• 'Privatdozent' (Priv.-Doz.) since April 3, 2018

2002-2008

• Ph.D. student at the Chair of Pattern Recognition (Computer Science Department 5) at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• Working for the Network of Excellence HUMAINE (2003-2007) and the project pf-star (2002-2004) of the European Community
• 11/07/2008 Doctoral degree

1997-2002

• Study of computer science at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg
• Major subjects: pattern recognition, computer graphics, and database systems
• Minor subjects: physiology
• Diploma thesis: Interpolation of hidden Markov models (speech recognition)
• Pre-diploma thesis: Confidence assessment for word hypotheses (speech recognition)

1996/1997

• Military service

1996

• University-entrance examination at the Benedikt-Stattler-Gymnasium in Bad Kötzting

1977

• Born in Bad Kötzting

International Experience

• 09/01/2010 - 08/31/2011 research scholar at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at Berkeley, CA, USA, sponsored by DAAD
•  1994: Westford Academy (high school), Westford, Massachusetts, U.S.A., for three months