Jessica Smith

Cohort 1 of the EPSRC Sustainable Sound Futures CDT gathered for a group photo indoors around a large anatomical ear model used for sound and hearing research.

Investigating Neighbour Noise through a Mixed-methods Approach to Understand Human Perception and Response

Project outline A given acoustic environment may consist of numerous individual sound sources with varying acoustic qualities, yet humans can intuitively separate sounds originating from different sources. Prior research has suggested that sources perceived as dominant within a soundscape play a significant role in overall soundscape perception (for example, if the dominant sound sources are […]

Evaluation of Complex Acoustic Environments Using Sound Source Separation Methods

Developing Methods for Addressing the Impacts of Anthropogenic Noise on Non-Human Animals During Development Planning

Project outline Noise is highlighted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as the second most harmful environmental pollutant with a growing body of evidence demonstrating its negative impacts on human health. UK policy and guidance prescribes acceptable noise levels, manages noise as a statutory nuisance and regulates noise-intensive activities via licensing. However, there is limited […]

Coupled Volume Design Approaches to Auditoria for Classical Music: Perceptual Evaluation and Computational Modelling

Project outline Cultural venues such as concert halls and opera houses provide significant socio-economic benefits to the communities they serve. They are often landmark buildings for a city or region, offering shared spaces for connection and artistic expression, and supporting the creative economy. The success of such venues is determined in part by the quality […]

Investigating the Impact of Noise on Cognitive Function, and How Hearing Technology can be used to Recover Performance

Project outline This project aims to develop our understanding of how noise impacts cognitive functioning, for example as measured by the change in a listener’s ability to perform a task in the presence of noise. Of particular interest is how the acoustic properties of noise impact our everyday thinking and productivity by consuming sensory and […]

Bio-inspired Auditory Models

Project outline This project aims to develop AI models inspired by the auditory system for improved auditory scene analysis. While recent advances in machine learning have produced numerous acoustic AI models for various auditory tasks, these models typically adapt architectures from computer vision or natural language processing. This cross-domain borrowing often results in models that […]

Auralisation of Acoustic Metamaterials

Project outline This project aims to develop virtual models to simulate and assess how humans perceive sound altered by acoustic metamaterials across different applications (such as absorptive treatments and noise mitigation), and to develop an interactive web app that demonstrates the sound of acoustic metamaterials through auralisation. The emergence of acoustic metamaterials has opened up […]

Using Real-time Acoustic Resynthesis in Virtual Reality to Assess Conversational Behaviour and User Preference for Hearing Aid Users

Project outline Evaluating the effectiveness of hearing aid algorithms can be a challenging task as evaluating different environments and conversational scenarios involves a large amount of preparation and effort on the behalf of both researchers and their participants. Using virtual reality, we intend to produce a synthetic environment that allows for a balance between reproducibility […]

Sound Analysis for Predicting Category 1 Ambulance Calls

Project outline This project is a strategic collaboration with the Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) aimed at enhancing the speed and accuracy of emergency call prioritization. The core objective is to develop and validate advanced deep learning models capable of analyzing the acoustic properties of emergency calls in real-time. A significant challenge in emergency dispatch is the rapid […]

Acoustic Performance, Analysis and Design of Steel Composites

Project outline To improve the acoustic performance in indoor environments it is vital to have a good understanding of all possible transmission paths between points in a building. This research focuses on steel stud-based double leafed walls which are building components that act as partitions inside buildings forming separate units or “rooms”. I am specifically […]