Explore the diversity and interdisciplinarity of our PhD projects across themes and cohorts.
Themes
Project outline Large numerical simulations dominate marine and aerospace industries when performing structural analysis on engineering platforms. These models are computationally intensive, and model updating often requires complete re-simulation. To enable practical real-time sensing applications for noise and vibration, sufficient sensor coverage is needed to acquire the data which characterises the dynamical behaviour for quantifying […]
Project outline Numerical methods for acoustic simulations are well established, but scale poorly to high frequencies and large domains. Important applications include simulation of outdoor noise propagation and room acoustics. Physics-informed machine learning is a new and rapidly developing field that has shown promising early results in other physical sciences, and offers significant potential for […]
Project outline Air source heat pumps (ASHPs) offer a significant opportunity to decarbonise home heating. However, the increasing rate of installations at homes across the UK and Europe may lead to a rise in community noise, impacting public health and wellbeing, and potentially hindering the adoption of heat pumps. Current standards for assessing noise from […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]