The Project is fulfilled by ERCSL (Educational Research Center for Speech and Language) which was established in July 1997 as an interdepartmental organization for more closely interaction among some speech research groups located in St. Petersburg.

Structure

Center consists of 4 branches including researchers/educational specialists from following organizations:

1. St. Petersburg Institute for Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Director - professor, doctor technical sciences Rafael Yusupov. Speech research branch head - Dr. Andrey Ronzhin .
2. Pavlov Institute of Physiology of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Director - professor, doctor medical sciences Jan Dvoretski. Speech physiology branch head - Valentina Lublinskaja.
3. St-Petersburg State University. Rector - academic, professor Ludmila Verbitskaja. Phonetic branch head - professor Lija Bondarko.
4. Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia. Rector - academic, professor Gennadi Bordovski. Computer linguistics branch head - professor Raimund Piotrowski.

Financial provision - Government Program "Integration of Education and Basic Research" for 1997-2004.

The main goals:

• Joint basic investigation natural spoken language processes by means of computer modelling.
• To involve leading academic researchers into educational process at universities.
• To involve university professors into the basic speech- language research at the academy of science.