Urban Sound Symposium

April 28-30, 2025

Organizing local institution

Empa, the Swiss Federal Institute of Material Sciences and Technology

Organizing committee

The organizing committee is formed by scientists with a long experience in urban acoustics and newer generations of acousticians. The members of the committee originate from a variety of European, American and Asian countries.

In alphabetic order:

  • Dr. Francesco Aletta (University College London, UK)
  • Dr. Rosa Maria Alsina-Pagès (La Salle, Barcelona, Spain)
  • Prof. Dr. Dick Botteldooren (Ghent University, Belgium)
  • Dr. Arnaud Can (Université Gustave Eiffel, Centre de Nantes)
  • Dr. Laura Estévez-Mauriz (Universidad de Léon, Spain)
  • Prof. Dr. Andre Fiebig (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany)
  • Prof. Dr. Catherine Guastavino (McGill University, Canada)
  • Prof. Dr. Jian Kang (University College London, UK)
  • Dr. Josep Llorca-Bofí (RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
  • Cleopatra Moshona (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany)
  • Dr. Sarah Payne (University of Surrey, UK)
  • Prof. Dr. Timothy Van Renterghem (Ghent University, Belgium)
  • Dr. Jean-Marc Wunderli (EMPA, Switzerland)

Supporting staff

  • Zeynep Ozturk (University College London, UK)
Technical program

Organizing committee members

Below you can find a short résumé of all organizing committee members.

Francesco Aletta

University College London, UK

Dr. Francesco Aletta is a Lecturer in Building Physics and Soundscape at Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, University College London (UCL). His research focuses on environmental acoustics and soundscape studies. Francesco is committed to advancing soundscape research through his contribution to the ISO 12913 series on soundscapes, which provides a comprehensive framework for assessing and managing urban sound environments. Francesco’s research has informed international policy discussions. He authored a United Nations Environment Programme report in 2022, addressing emerging environmental concerns related to noise and its impact on public health and urban environments. His work is frequently referred in policy documents and guidelines aimed at promoting healthier and more sustainable sound environments globally. As part of his standardization efforts, Francesco coordinated the Soundscape Attributes Translation Project, an international collaboration of more than 100 scholars worldwide. He is also an active member of editorial boards for leading journals, including the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (Coordinating Editor for TC Noise), and member of the organizing committee of several international conferences, including the Urban Sound Symposium, and the Lancet UK Public Health Science Conference. Francesco is a member of the Italian Acoustical Society (AIA), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and serves as secretary of the Technical Committee Noise of the European Acoustics Association (EAA). With over 200 publications, 6,000 citations and multiple awards, including the ASA Science Communication Award in 2023, Francesco aims to contribute to the global discourse on soundscape design, urban acoustics, and public health.

Rosa Maria Alsina-Pagès

La Salle Campus Barcelona, Spain 

Dr. Rosa Maria Alsina-Pagès is the Director of Research and Innovation of La Salle Campus Barcelona. She has been the Research Director of La Salle Campus BCN since 2019, an institution with six SGR research groups recognized by AGAUR. The campus also houses a technology transfer center with the ACCIÓ TECNIO seal, with more than 90 researchers from the fields of management, architecture, engineering and digital arts, and more than 80 research and transfer projects regularly underway. Dr. Alsina-Pagès is a Engineer in Electronics and Telecommunications (2002 and 2004 respectively), from La Salle-URL, Graduate in Humanities from the UOC (2012), Master in Project Management from La Salle – URL (2003). She is also a Doctor in ICT and its management by the URL in 2012. She has published +55 articles in JCR and Scopus indexed journals, and has more than 90 contributions in reference conferences. She has participated in several projects financed with public and private funds. She has led LIFE+, INNOTEC, NEOTEC, JPI Oceans, CDTI and Llavor (IdC) projects, among other public and private funding projects.

Dick Botteldooren

Ghent University, Belgium

Dick Botteldooren is a full professor at Ghent University where he leads research on Acoustics and teaches a variety of courses related to sound and computational methods. He obtained an MSc degree in Electronic Engineering in 1986 from Ghent University and a PhD in Applied Science in 1990 from Ghent University. Between 2004 and 2013 he was the Editor-in-Chief of Acta Acustica united with Acustica, the journal of the European Acoustics Association. Until 2018 he was the president of the Belgian Acoustical Society; currently he is I-INCE vice-president for Europe and Africa. He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He has made research contributions in the field of acoustic modeling, noise mapping, environmental sensor networks, computational intelligence, modeling perception of environmental sound, health impacts of sound, biomonitoring, urban sound planning, soundscapes, and noise policy support.

Arnaud Can

Université Gustave Eiffel, Centre de Nantes

Dr. Arnaud Can is a researcher in environmental acoustics at the Gustave Eiffel University, in the Joint Research Unit in Environmental Acoustics (UMRAE). He also holds a part-time position of associate professor in Ghent University. His research interests deal with (i) the characterization of urban noise environments, including participatory and citizen-based approaches, and (ii) the evaluation of the links between mobility and urban sound environments, relying on mobility and road traffic modeling at different spatial scales. He is currently the coordinator of the ANR SYMEXPO and ANR Sonorezé II projects, and the animator of the axe “Urban Sound Environments” at the Research Federation IRSTV (CNRS FR2488).

Laura Estévez-Mauriz

Universidad de Léon, Spain

Laura Estévez-Mauriz is an Associate Professor at the Universidad de León in Spain. Born in Mexico, she moved to Spain to begin her second year of studies in Architecture. Laura continued her education with a Master’s in Acoustical and Vibration Engineering, followed by a Master’s in Teacher Training. She began her career as a research assistant in Spain and furthered it through the Marie Curie Programme at the EU-funded SONORUS project at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, where she obtained her PhD in Applied Acoustics. Currently, Laura works as Associate Professor in the Applied Physics area at the University of León and is a member of the Atmospheric Environment Research Group. Her research focuses on Urban Sound Planning, and she has published over 20 articles with a transdisciplinary emphasis, participating in 13 competitive research projects. Laura also has experience in knowledge transfer activities aimed at society and the professional sector. Additionally, she is actively involved in promoting STEM careers and advancing research career development across Europe.

André Fiebig

Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

André Fiebig is a visiting professor in the area of psychoacoustics at the Department of Engineering Acoustics, Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Technical Acoustics (ISTA), Technische Universität Berlin. Prior to his tenure at the TU Berlin he worked for HEAD acoustics GmbH for several years where he lead a working group concerned with developing test procedures for the investigation of sound perception and assessment. He is involved in national and international standardization working groups and has contributed to several international research projects investigating the impact of environmental noise on humans. He currently chairs the technical committee on noise at the German Acoustical Society DEGA. He has authored several scientific publications including book chapters about soundscape, metric development and jury testing methods. His special research interest lies in the field of cognitive stimulus integration of streams of auditory sensations in the context of environmental noise. 

Catherine Guastavino

McGill University, Canada

Catherine Guastavino is a Professor at McGill University (School of Information Studies, Schulich School of Music) and a CIRMMT member. She directs the Multimodal Interaction Lab and the Sounds in the City partnership, which brings together diverse academics, professionals, artists, and citizens to rethink the role of sound in cities. She has published extensively on urban soundscapes, (multi)sensory experience, spatial hearing, room acoustics, and music perception and cognition. She also has extensive experience collaborating with industry partners, cultural institutions, as well as with municipal and provincial governments.

Jian Kang

University College London, UK

Jian Kang is Professor of Acoustics at the Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment, University College London. He is Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering, chairs the European Acoustics Association Technical Committee for Noise, and is recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant Award, working internationally on developing Soundscape Indices.

Dr. Josep Llorca-Bofí

RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Josep is a Junior Principal Investigator at RWTH Aachen University. He leads the ‘PAAD – Person-focused Analysis of Architectural Design’ research group developing acoustic and visual simulations of architectural and urban environments, specially exploring the interaction between design and perception.

Cleopatra Moshona

Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

Cleopatra is currently a research associate and PhD candidate at the Department of Engineering Acoustics, Institute of Fluid Mechanics and Technical Acoustics (ISTA), Technische Universität Berlin. Her thesis focuses on investigating listening effort in adverse speech conditions by combining behavioral, psychophysiological and subjective measurement methods. Cleopatra is involved in a number of soundscape-related projects, focusing on standardization, the development of language-specific assessment tools to assess acoustic environments and the development of frameworks to categorize real-world examples of soundscape interventions. She has been a member of the “Soundscape Attribute Translation Project” (SATP) consortium since 2020 and has set up the “Catalogue of Soundscape Interventions” (CSI), in cooperation with UCL.

Dr. Sarah Payne

University of Surrey, UK

Sarah Payne is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey, UK. Trained in Psychology (BSc Psychology, MSc Environmental Psychology), her PhD Architecture studying the “restorative value of urban park soundscapes” crossed disciplinary boundaries incorporating environmental psychology and acoustics. The interdisciplinary nature of Sarah’s research interests resulted in her subsequently working in acoustic, engineering, landscape architecture, geography and planning academic departments in the UK, Canada, Norway and Finland. This has resulted in an applied focus to her work, whilst valuing the theoretical and methodological requirements for valuable research.

Prof. Dr. Timothy Van Renterghem

Ghent University, Belgium

Timothy Van Renterghem received his degree in Bio-engineering (Environmental Technologies) at Ghent University, Faculty of Bio-engineering Sciences, in 1999. In October 2003, he obtained his PhD at Ghent University, Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Department of Information Technology, Research group WAVES. Timothy is currently Associate Professor in Environmental Acoustics, and teaches different courses related to noise pollution, acoustical instrumentation and urban (sound) planning.

Timothy Van Renterghem is member of the Belgian Acoustical Society (ABAV), the European Acoustical Association (EAA), and the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). He is Associate-Editor of Acta Acustica united with Acustica (journal of the EAA) for the theme “Atmospheric Sound” and Elsevier’s Urban Forestry and Urban Greening. He is currently author of about 80 A1-publications, and more than 135 publications in the proceedings of international congresses. His main research interest is sound propagation outdoors, strongly linked to the environmental noise issue. Subtopics of interest are the impact of local meteorology on sound propagation in the atmospheric boundary layer, the interaction between vegetation and acoustic waves and urban sound propagation. A specific measure of continuing interest is how vegetation can be used to mitigate environmental noise issues, both from the physical point of view (decibel reduction) and perception improvement (including audio-visual interactions and soundscaping with natural sounds).

Jean Marc Wunderli

Empa, Switzerland

Dr. Jean Marc Wunderli is head of the laboratory of Acoustics / Noise Control at Empa, an applied research institute of the ETH domain, and lecturer at ETH Zurich. He has more than 25 years of experience in measuring, modelling and assessing environmental noise. A second field of research are the effects of noise on human beings, where he conducted projects to establish exposure-response-functions for transportation noise (road, rail, air traffic) and shooting noise. In recent projects he studied the beneficial effects of green and its role for restoration from stress.

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