Leuven, Belgium — First‑year PhD student Stuart Cumming, part of the inaugural cohort of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Sound Futures, presented his early research findings at the Symposium on Acoustic Metamaterials (SAM2026), hosted by YRAM – Young Researchers in Acoustic Metamaterials.
Held in the historic city of Leuven, the symposium provided a platform for emerging researchers to share new ideas, strengthen collaborations, and discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of metamaterials research. Stuart delivered a presentation titled “Auralisation of Sound Transmission Through a Vibro‑Acoustic Metamaterial,” showcasing the first results from his doctoral work at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR), University of Southampton, supervised by Dr Felix Landfeldt.
Stuart’s research 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 a wide range of novel ways to control sound, from extremely thin low-frequency sound absorbers to acoustic invisibility cloaks. The performance assessment of current metamaterials-based technologies is exclusively focused on objective metrics, such as absorption coefficients or sound pressure levels. What is missing in the current research landscape is a different view that looks at the human perception of how sound is altered by acoustic metamaterials and whether this can be exploited to make noise sound more pleasant, without necessarily improving objective metrics.