Dear List,
At TU Delft, we are offering a 4-year fully-funded PhD position on "Acoustic and psychoacoustic modelling for sound quality assessment in hospital PICUs” in collaboration with our societal (Sophia Children’s Hospital Erasmus MC), industrial (Sorama) and academic partners (Iuav and IRCAM). We are looking for a PhD candidate who can develop listener-centric novel metrics and data-centric design for monitoring healthcare acoustic environments.
Context
Noise pollution poses a significant health risk, particularly in sensitive environments like Paediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs). Current methods for managing sound in these spaces primarily focus on measuring decibel levels, which fail to address how humans actually perceive and are affected by different sounds. This limitation makes it difficult for clinical staff to understand and mitigate the impact of specific noises on patient well-being and staff performance. To overcome this, our project, Auditory Footprints, is developing a novel digital platform for real-time, perception-informed soundscape analysis in PICUs.
We are seeking a PhD candidate to develop the core algorithms for this platform. This research will involve creating a Sound Quality Index (SQI), a new metric that synthesizes acoustic, psychoacoustic, perceptual, and contextual data. The successful candidate will work on several key areas: extracting and analysing traditional and psychoacoustic metrics from hospital recordings, developing predictive models to estimate the emotional impact of soundscapes, and creating an automatic sound event classification system. The final SQI will be a dynamic and integrated tool, providing clinical staff with actionable feedback to improve the sound environment and, ultimately, patient care.
This PhD project offers a unique opportunity to contribute to a pioneering interdisciplinary initiative that merges sound computing, machine learning, human perception modelling, and healthcare research. The candidate will collaborate with experts from academia, hospitals, and industry to create a solution that not only pushes the boundaries of indoor soundscape research but also has a direct societal impact on improving healthcare environments and outcomes.
Job requirements (a selection)
- MSc Degree in Computer Science, Acoustics, Audio Engineering, or related fields.
- Strong background in physics and mathematics, ideally knowledge in sound computing, signal processing, and psychoacoustic modelling.
- Experience with signal processing and machine learning for audio (e.g. speech modelling, sound event detection, source separation, etc) is an advantage.
- Team player, open to discussion and constructive criticism.
- Positive attitude to diverse approaches and inclusive behaviour.
- Interest in healthcare solutions is highly valued.
More info via the Auditory Footprints Project Page:
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Interested candidated can apply via the link:
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Additional information
The PhD candidate will be working as part of the Auditory Footprints project funded by Dutch Research Council NWO Open Technology Programme. The candidate will be embedded in the Critical Alarms Lab (CAL) at Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering and the PsychoAcoustic LIstening LAboratory at the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering (PALILA). The project has strong ties with Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam where audio data collection will take place and the data will be trained for. Also, international collaboration will take place in coordination with Simone Spgnol (Iuav, Italy).
For more information about this vacancy, please contact both Dr. Roberto Merino Martinez (r.merinomartinez@xxxxxxxxxx) and Dr. Elif Özcan (e.ozcan@xxxxxxxxxx).
For more info:
https://www.tudelft.nl/lr/palila
https://delftdesignlabs.org/criticalalarmslab/