This one-year master's in Voice Technology will give you the expertise you need to contribute to the cutting edge in voice synthesis and speech recognition.
Whenever you dictate a message on your smartphone or ask Alexa the weather, you are using voice technologies. But this is only the beginning! Soon speech technologies will be present in even more smart places, with applications in health, cybersecurity, language learning, and much more. For now, people with scientific expertise in the domain of VT are in short supply. We aim to fix that!
This programme is suitable for students from different academic backgrounds with a strong interest in tech. You will work in teams to make your own synthetic voices, speech recognisers, and more. Interact with guest speakers from speech tech start-ups, multinationals, and research labs around the world and have the chance to collaborate with PhD students. In the final semester, you will even make your own voice tech demo as a final project.
The programme was developed in consultation with partners from Silicon Valley, local start-ups and universities worldwide to ensure you acquire expertise in voice synthesis and speech recognition and have the requisite mastery of programming, machine learning, and speech sounds to make an impact when you graduate.
The Voice Technology MSc. is the only graduate programme dedicated to voice synthesis and speech recognition. This is an interdisciplinary programme in which students from diverse backgrounds collaborate with each other and industrial partners. You will develop speech recognizers, make synthetic voices, and execute empirical experiments. Your thesis project also includes making a demonstrator to showcase your expertise.
Leeuwarden is a city of innovation, home to many start-ups and established companies, including serious game and tech businesses which could collaborate on voice technology applications. Additionally, there are several other universities, colleges, research institutes, and language-related NGOs. Voice technology is even recognized by the province as a crucial domain of regional interest, indicating strong political support for this master's programme.
Leeuwarden is a medium-sized vibrant student city and the capital of the province of Fryslân. It is a highly cultural city, recently named the European Capital of Culture. It offers many festivals, bars, cinemas, museums, theatres, and parks. Leeuwarden, like all of Fryslân, is multilingual with many locals speaking the Frisian language alongside Dutch, English and others. It is, then, an interesting test-bed for voice technology developments involving less-resourced languages, multilingualism and code switching.
Affordable housing and accommodation are easily found. The inter-city high-speed trains provide easy connection to the nearby city of Groningen and many other cities, from The Hague to Amsterdam.
The curriculum is aligned across four blocks.
1: The courses in this block lay the foundations for the MSc. Voice Technology with essential content needed for the rest of the programme. This includes an introductory course into voice technology (in which you will develop your first application). Students also learn Python programming for voice technology and become familiar with the scientific study of speech sounds.
2: This block provides subject-specific courses on voice technology. The knowledge and skills learned in the 1st block are used together with Machine Learning within the courses Speech Recognition I and Speech Synthesis I, both of which start from the humble beginnings of voice technology, and give students an inside, hands-on view on some of the first attempts to automatically recognize and synthesize voice up to current systems.
3: Speech recognition and synthesis are taken to a higher level in Speech Recognition II and Speech Synthesis II as students learn about state-of-the art systems and real-world challenges, augmented with guest lectures given by industrial partners. The Thesis Design course educates students on experimental protocol and research ethics and guides them through the development of a pilot study and prototype demonstrator.
4: Students combine knowledge and skills from the previous blocks and use them in their Thesis Project. Building on the pilot study and prototype developed in the last block, students write their thesis and polish their prototype to create a demonstrator suitable for their thesis defense. They also prepare to present results at the end of the year.
Semesters | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
CoursesCourse Catalog > | 1a | 1b | 2a | 2b |
Introduction to Voice Technology (5 EC) | ||||
Programming (5 EC) | ||||
Speech Sounds (5 EC) | ||||
Machine Learning (5 EC) | ||||
Speech Recognition I (5 EC) | ||||
Speech Synthesis I (5 EC) | ||||
Speech Recognition II (5 EC) | ||||
Speech Synthesis II (5 EC) | ||||
Thesis Design (5 EC) | ||||
Thesis Project (15 EC) |
Study programme | Organization | Transition |
---|---|---|
Artificial Intelligence | All Research universities | No additional requirements |
Linguistics | All Research universities | No additional requirements |
Computing Science | All Research universities | No additional requirements |
Artificial Intelligence | All Research universities | No additional requirements |
Specific requirements | More information |
---|---|
language test |
Sufficient English language proficiency is required, except for native speakers from the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and The Netherlands. The following documents are valid:
An exemption can be given by the Admission Board. |
Type of student | Deadline | Start course |
---|---|---|
Dutch students | 01 July 2024 | 01 September 2024 |
EU/EEA students | 01 May 2024 | 01 September 2024 |
non-EU/EEA students | 01 May 2024 | 01 September 2024 |
Be aware that the table about the selection procedures refers to the country where you obtained your diploma, not your nationality. 'Dutch students' for example means students with a Dutch diploma.
Specific requirements | More information |
---|---|
language test |
Sufficient English language proficiency is required, except for native speakers from the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and The Netherlands. The following documents are valid:
An exemption can be given by the Admission Board. |
Exam | Minimum score |
---|---|
C1 Advanced (formerly CAE) | C1 |
C2 Proficiency (formerly CPE) | C2 |
IELTS overall band | 6.5 |
IELTS listening | 6 |
IELTS reading | 6 |
IELTS writing | 6 |
IELTS speaking | 6 |
TOEFL internet based | 90 |
The MSc VT allows direct entry for anyone with a bachelor's degree from a recognized university and a sincere interest in the topic. That said, a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Artificial intelligence and Applied Linguistics (and familiarity with Python) would be an asset.
Type of student | Deadline | Start course |
---|---|---|
Dutch students | 01 July 2024 | 01 September 2024 |
EU/EEA students | 01 May 2024 | 01 September 2024 |
non-EU/EEA students | 01 May 2024 | 01 September 2024 |
Nationality | Year | Fee | Programme form |
---|---|---|---|
EU/EEA | 2023-2024 | € 2314 | full-time |
non-EU/EEA | 2023-2024 | € 17800 | full-time |
Practical information for:
After your studies you can work in industry, for example at the speech labs of the bigger tech companies. Due to the interdisciplinary character of the programme students from different backgrounds learn to communicate and work together. The combination of programming and machine learning skills with linguistics knowledge is a very attractive feature for the labor market. Of course students can also pursue an academic career. Thus, there are several academic speech labs in Europe and beyond.
Throughout the programme we invite several guest speakers from industry. That way students will get a good impression of the various possibilities ranging from developing speech recognizer, synthetic voices, automatic detection of pathologies from speech, the use of voice technology in robotica and/or dialogue systems, etc. The voice technology industry is a fast-growing market which provides lots of opportunities for graduates.
The MSc. Voice Technology is embodied in the “Culture, Language and Technology” research department. Which consists of an international, multidisciplinary team of PhD's and postdoctoral researchers working on topics as diverse as voice-based disease recognition, multilingualism and the brain, voice synthesis for under-resourced languages, multilingual ethnography, and more.
Some of these young scholars may make a guest appearance in your
lectures and provide opportunities to connect to doctoral research
projects, co-authored publications, or one of our multiple
EU-subsidized research grants.
Read more"You can achieve something remarkable with this Master's programme!"
Tatsu Matsushima, alumnus
During my master's study, I have learned all the necessary fundamental theories and practices of deep learning, speech recognition, and speech synthesis. Since deep learning is rapidly advancing and still under development, the skill allowing me to keep expanding my knowledge and updating myself on state-of-the-art approaches is of lifelong value.
As you may know, MSc. Voice Technology is the only program in Europe that focuses on voice technology. Because of the narrow scope, you will be able to learn deeply from traditional and advanced approaches in the field. I would definitely recommend the program if you are enthusiastic about learning the intersection of AI and speech. This is a unique opportunity!
Having said that, voice technology is a complicated discipline that requires a great deal of motivation and effort to learn new things. If you are up for a challenge I'm sure you can achieve something remarkable with this master's program!
Read moreLeminh Nguyen
Leminh Nguyen is a graduate of the MSc Voice Technology program. In his thesis, he pioneered improvements in the automatic recognition of Luxembourgish, his native language. As a result of this work, he was invited by the Luxembourgish Ministry of Education to create an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) web application for the Luxembourgish language.
He was also invited to present his work during the prestigious 2022 IEEE Spoken Language Technology workshop in Qatar. While in Qatar he took the time to speak with us about his research, its implications, and why he is so passionate about the topic.
Read moreSpeech Sounds course testimonial
The course Speech Sounds is integral in the Masters of Voice technology. The scope of the course involves the interface between phonetics/phonology and speech technology. One major challenge is the diverse profiles of students, some coming from the social sciences, others from computing sciences, and still others from different fields. Lecturer Vass Verkhodanova masterfully balances this complex issue through highly innovative and hands-on approaches.
The Voice Technology MSc attracts students interested in topics like A.I., computer science, human/machine interaction, linguistics, and/or digital humanities. Our students are curiosity-driven, collaborative, creative people passionate about science & tech. Many will pursue a career at a tech company or start-up, others are entrepreneurs or doctoral candidates. The programme appeals most to students interested in a hands-on, highly engaged, interdisciplinary programme on voice technologies.
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