Dear Colleague,
Join the SAND Challenge, where your speech analysis, signal processing and artificial intelligence expertise can make a real difference in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases, like Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

We're inviting you to tackle two critical tasks:
- Classifying patients;
- Predicting disease progression over time.

All details at: https://www.sand.icar.cnr.it/

Do not miss this opportunity, be part of the SAND Challenge!

Best Regards,
SAND Organizers


=======================================================
SAND - Speech Analysis for Neurodegenerative Diseases challenge
@IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing

4-8 May 2026, Barcelona, Spain
https://www.sand.icar.cnr.it/
=======================================================


MISSION:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This challenge deals with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Starting from a data set of vocal signals gathered by the organisers from both ill and healthy subjects, the challenge proposes two different tasks: (i) classify the subjects, and (ii) predict how the disease worsens over time.


INTRODUCTION:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SAND stems from the need to analyse noninvasive, objective, and scalable biomarkers for early diagnosis and longitudinal monitoring. This is because diseases such as ALS, present complex diagnostic challenges due to heterogeneous symptom profiles and overlapping clinical features. Current diagnostic tools are largely based on subjective clinical scales and often fail to detect early changes, resulting in delayed intervention and suboptimal care for patients. This underscores the urgent need to use noninvasive biomarkers.

With this challenge, we would like to redefine neurodegenerative disease assessment by positioning speech as a central, AI-powered biomarker for diagnosis and monitoring.
Speech captures the interaction between motor and cognitive systems and is often subtly impaired in the prodromal phases of neurodegeneration. Unlike traditional biomarkers (e.g., neuroimaging, CSF analysis), voice data can be collected easily, repeatedly, and inexpensively, offering a transformative opportunity for global, equitable healthcare solutions.


GOALS:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have designed two tasks to address the major challenges faced in the monitoring of neurodegenerative diseases.

We warmly welcome researchers from academia and industry to participate and jointly explore reliable solutions
for these challenging scenarios. Participants can contribute to one or both tasks proposed here:
• TASK 1: multi-class classification at time 0 (first assessment);
• TASK 2: multi-class prediction (latest assessment).

Detailed information and all guidelines are available on the challenge's official website, www.sand.icar.cnr.it

The five highest-ranked teams will be invited to showcase their work at IEEE ICASSP 2026 Conference.

Accepted contributions will be published in the official ICASSP proceedings (IEEE-indexed).
The challenge-dedicated session will highlight presentations from the top-performing participants and conclude
with a panel discussion.

Don’t miss this engaging event!


IMPORTANT DATES:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
• September 01, 2025: Challenge Registration opens and Release of the datasets (training)
• October 01, 2025: Release of the datasets (testing) - first day for submitting results and code
• November 20, 2025: Challenge submission closes – last day for registration, submitting results and code
• December 02, 2025: Results announcement
• December 07, 2025: 2-page Papers Due (by invitation only)
• January 11, 2026: 2-page Paper Acceptance Notification
• January 18, 2026: Camera-ready 2-page Papers Due