M.Sc. Anna Leschanowsky
- Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Nils Peters
- Room: 1.5.08
- anna.leschanowsky@iis.fraunhofer.de
I am a senior scientist in the Speech and Audio Research Department at Fraunhofer IIS, working at the intersection of speech technology, HCI, and AI ethics. My background is in audio and speech processing. Nowadays my research addresses a question that audio and speech processing alone cannot answer: understanding what it takes to build conversational AI systems that are genuinely worthy of the trust people place in them.
Voice is one of the most intimate channels through which people interact with technology. It carries not just words, but identity, emotion, health and much more. As conversational AI systems move into healthcare, legal advice, and everyday domestic life, the question of whether they protect the people who use them and treat them fairly has become urgent.
Responsible speech and conversational AI cannot be built by technical researchers alone, nor governed by policy researchers alone. My work spans the technical, human, and governance dimensions of this challenge: building and evaluating privacy-preserving voice systems, studying how people experience them through user studies and mixed-methods research, and developing the evaluation frameworks and design patterns that translate findings into practice.
I am always happy to talk about responsible conversational AI, voice privacy, fairness in speech technology, and the governance challenges that come with both.
Research Interests
- Voice Privacy
- Bias and Fairness in Voice Technologies
- Responsible Conversational AI and AI Ethics
News
| May, 12th, 2026 | Our work "Towards Robust Evaluation for Privacy QA Systems" has been accepted to appear at the LEGAL + CALD-pseudo Workshop 2026 |
| April, 20 - 24, 2026 | I am part of a panel discussion at the Privacy Symposium in Venice. |
| March, 15, 2026 | I serve on the program committee for Conference on Sociotechnical Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP2026). |
| March, 4, 2026 | I serve on the program committee for Joint Workshop on Legal and Ethical Issues in HLT (LEGAL2026) and Computational Approaches to Language Data Pseudonymization, Anonymization, De-identification, and Data Privacy (CALD-pseudo 2026). |
Show Archive
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| November 17, 2025 | Our special session proposal Speech AI for All: Challenging Deficit-based Approaches to Speech Science and Technology got acccepted at Interspeech 2026! |
| November 13, 2025 | I am speaking at the World Usability Day 2025 in Nürnberg. |
| November 7-9, 2025 | We - Michaela Pnacekova and I - showcase When The Computer Says Nah at the Mozilla Festival 2025 in Barcelona. |
| October 15, 2025 | I'll be teaching the seminar on "Data Governance Foundations" at FAU this winter term. |
| October 12-15, 2025 | Super excited to participate in my very first Writers' Workshop at PLOP 2025! |
| September 11, 2025 | New paper alert! Exploring the Impact of Modality and Speech Rate Manipulation in Voice Permission Requests—Limits of Applicability and Potential for Influencing Decision-Making is out! |
| September 1-4, 2025 | I'll be teaching "Applied Data Governance: From Foundations to Implementation" at this year's Informatica Feminale in Bremen. Register now! |
| August 17-21, 2025 | I will be at Interspeech 2025 to present our paper Benchmarking Neural Speech Codec Intelligibility with SITool. |
| August 17, 2025 | Michaela Pnacekova and I will showcase Prediction XR at the Speech Science Festival! |
| May 19, 2025 | Two papers have been accepted for Interspeech 2025. See you in Rotterdam! |
| April 26 - May 1, 2025 | I'll be at CHI 2025 to present our Late Breaking Work on Expert-Generated Privacy Q&A Dataset for Conversational AI and User Study Insights! |
| April 1, 2025 | I'll be teaching the seminar on "Data Governance Applications" at FAU this summer term. Join if you're a data science student! |
| March 31, 2025 | I am part of the program committee of the 2025 European Symposium on Usable Security. Submit your papers on Usable Security and Privacy! |
| March 18-20, 2025 | I am speaking at the European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit 2025. |
| November 29, 2024 | Join us for the "Story of MP3" event. |
| October 21, 2024 | Together with Birgit Popp, I'll be teaching the seminar on "Data Governance Foundations" at FAU this winter term. |
| September 30 - October 2, 2024 | Looking forward to the IEEE International Symposium on the Internet of Sounds where I serve as the student volunteer coordinator. |
| September 10-13, 2024 | I am taking part in the Summer School on Security and Privacy in the Age of AI. |
| September 6, 2024 | I am excited to present our paper "Examining the Interplay Between Privacy and Fairness for Speech Processing: A Review and Perspective" at the 4th Symposium on Security and Privacy in Speech Communication, which has received the Best Paper Award! |
| August 14-16, 2024 | Together with Birgit Popp, I'll be teaching "Data Governance Foundations" at this year's Informatica Feminale. |
| June 18, 2024 | Our journal paper "Evaluating privacy, security, and trust perceptions in conversational AI: A systematic review" is now available! |
| June 17, 2024 | Casandra Rusti and I present at the SPSC Webinar. |
| April 22, 2024 | I am speaking at the 3. Regensburger Cybersecurity-Kongress. |
| April 14-19, 2024 | I am presenting our paper "Voice Anonymization for All - Bias Evaluation of the Voice Privacy Challenge Baseline System" at ICASSP 2024. |
| March 8, 2024 | Student Anjana Rajasekhar won the Best Student Paper Award at the 35th Conference on Electronic Speech Signal Processing (ESSV) for the paper Towards Speech Privacy Assessment for Voice Assistants: Exploring Subjective and Objective Measures for Babble Noise. |
| January 19, 2024 | I've successfully passed the Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT) Exam. |
| December 13, 2023 | I was elected Vice Chair of the AES Germany for the term 2024/2025! |
| November 22-23, 2023 | I am presenting our position paper "Experts-in-the-Loop: Establishing an Effective Workflow in Crafting Privacy Q&A" at Conversations 2023 in Oslo! |
| November 9, 2023 | I am speaking at the World Usability Day 2023 Nürnberg. |
| October 21, 2023 | We are at the Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften 2023! Visit us at Fraunhofer IIS in Erlangen and explore privacy dialogues for speech assistants! |
| October 16-17, 2023 | I am excited to present our paper "Privacy Strategies for Conversational AI and their Influence on Users’ Perceptions and Decision-Making" at the European Symposium on Usable Security 2023! |
| September 25-28, 2023 | Our paper "Benchmark Dataset Dynamics, Bias and Privacy Challenges in Voice Biometrics Research" was accepted at IEEE International Joint Conference on Biometrics (IJCB 2023)! Looking forward to meeting colleagues from FairEVA and attending the Doctoral Consortium there. |
| September 13-15, 2023 | I am at the Responsible AI Forum 2023 to talk about privacy dialogues in Conversational AI. |
| September 9, 2023 | My first Journal paper "Debiasing Strategies for Conversational AI: Improving Privacy and Security Decision-Making" is now available! |
| September 7, 2023 | Looking forward to participating in the podium discussion on Gender bias in AI at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg organized by Women in AI & Robotics. |
| July 23-28, 2023 | I'll be presenting our paper "Uncertain yet rational - Uncertainty as an Evaluation Measure of Rational Privacy Decision-Making in Conversational AI" at the HCII International 2023. |
| June 25-30, 2023 | I am taking part in the Fifth Interdisciplinary Summerschool on Privacy. |
| June 8-10, 2023 | I am off to New York to showcase Predication XR with the XR artist Michaela Pnacekova at HASTAC. |
| April 16, 2023 | My talk from the European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit is now available online. |
| March 20-24, 2023 | Meet me and FairEVA at the Mozilla Festival 2023. |
| March 15 & 16, 2023 | I am at the European Chatbot & Conversational AI Summit to talk about privacy dialogues in Conversational AI. |
Current Student Supervision
- Sheetal Vijapurapu: HiWi + Master Thesis
- Santhwana Thadavantavida: Research Intern + HiWi
- Shadi Rastegarmoghadam Cheraghi: HiWi
- Deepthi Varghese: Research Intern + Master Thesis
Previous Student Supervision
- Farnaz Salamatjoo: HiWi
- Asma Shaikh: Research Intern + Master Thesis
- Josephina Imhoff: HiWi
- Nayana Jacob: Master Thesis
- Anjana Rajasekhar: HiWi + Master Thesis
Supervised Master Theses
- Anjana Rajasekhar - Assessing the Effectiveness of Obfuscation Techniques for Speech Privacy Preservation and Their Impact on Utility (FAU, 2025)
- Asma Shaikh - Eyetracking to Assess the Effectiveness of Debiasing Strategies for Privacy Decision-Making in Conversational AI (FAU, 2025)
- Nayana Jacob Alappattu - Advancing Privacy Evaluation and Attack Models für Speech Obfuscation Techniques (FAU, 2025)
Scientific Reviewer
- IEEE Signal Processing Letters
- ACM CHI 2025 (1 Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews), EuroUSEC 2025, ACM CHI 2026 (1 Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews), ACM IUI 2026
- Social Inclusion (ISSN: 21832803)
- Behaviour and Information Technology (ISSN: 13623001)
- International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction (ISSN: 15327590)
Certification
- Certified Information Privacy Technologist (CIPT) by IAPP - International Association of Privacy Professionals
Awards and Honors
- Best Paper Award, 4th Symposium on Security and Privacy in Speech Communication (SPSC), 2024
- Best Student Paper Award, Conference on Electronic Speech Signal Processing (ESSV), 2024
- Master Award Siemens AG Corporate Technology, 2022