Dear List, Please find below the announcement for a PhD position that could be available in my lab. Thanks for circulating it among your interested students. cheers, mat ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Ph.D. position in Room acoustics/Psychoacoustics, Lyon, France « Acoustical quality and intelligibility in a noisy room » Summary The aim of the proposed research is to develop a tool for predicting room quality based on human perception. Acoustical measurements exist to predict the intelligibility of a solitary voice in a room, but none takes into account the presence of competing voices (cocktail-party situations). Such a measurement would be helpful to improve communication, security and comfort inside buildings, as well as their accessibility for hearing-impaired people. Recent work* allowed us to predict the intelligibility of a voice in the presence of multiple noise sources. We now aimed at more common (and complex) situations involving competing speech sources: predict the intelligibility of a voice within other voices in a room. Segregation mechanisms based on amplitude modulation of the interferers and pitch differences between the competing voices would need to be described (design and analysis of controlled listening tests), and the influence of reverberation on these mechanisms would need to be modeled (measure and simulation in room acoustics). In parallel to this development of the intelligibility model, we would like to test it for evaluating room quality. This would require the simulation of cocktail-party situations, and the comparison with acoustical measurements done in real situations (social meetings, restaurants …). *Lavandier, Jelfs, Culling, Watkins, Raimond and Makin (2012) Binaural prediction of speech intelligibility in reverberant rooms with multiple noise sources, J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 131 (1), pp. 218-231. Funding is not secured yet, but opportunities exist within the department (DGCB). Applications for these fundings have to be made together with the selected candidate. Starting date of Ph.D.: October 1st 2012 Deadline for applications: May 29th 2012 (send your application, CV and coordinates of 2 referees). Contact : Mathieu Lavandier (mathieu.lavandier@xxxxxxxx, +33 (0)4 72 04 70 30) Université de Lyon, Ecole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l'Etat (ENTPE) Département Génie Civil et Bâtiment (DGCB) Rue M. Audin, 69518 Vaulx-en-Velin Cedex, FRANCE ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mathieu Lavandier Rue M. Audin, 69518 Vaulx-en-Velin Cedex, FRANCE |