Arnthrudur Gisladottir

Niras A/S, Denmark

Arnthrudur Gisladottir holds a PhD in Civil and Architectural Engineering from Aarhus University. Her PhD research focused on the relationship between architectural design and the urban sound environment and how expertise and knowledge on sound can gain higher status in urban development projects. Arnthrudur currently works as an engineering consultant in noise and acoustics at Niras A/S, focusing on bridging the knowledge from her PhD studies into practice.

Beat Hohmann

SGA-SSA, Switzerland

Beat W. Hohmann, Dr. sc. techn. ETH, studied electrical engineering/acoustics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH). He was responsible for the prevention of noise-induced hearing loss at the Swiss National Accident Insurance Fund (Suva) and has been on the board of the Swiss Acoustical Society (SGA-SSA) since 1994, serving as president from 1995 to 2006. He is committed to the acoustic quality of public outdoor spaces and documents their soundscapes with 3D sound recordings in 5.1.2 multi-channel and binaural technology. He also initiated the SGA-SSA 3D Sound Map, which presents binaural recordings from all over Switzerland and abroad as the Swiss contribution to the International Year of Sound. In 2023/2024, he was involved in setting up the website klangraumarchitektur.ch providing practical design tips for improving the acoustic quality of outdoor spaces.

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.

Cedric Vuye

University of Antwerp, Belgium

Cedric Vuye holds a master’s degree in construction engineering and a PhD in engineering sciences from the Free University of Brussels (VUB, Belgium). He is an associate professor, program director of the department of construction engineering, and lab manager within the SuPAR group at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. His research interests include low-noise pavements and noise barriers (objective and subjective impacts), recycling and inclusion of waste materials, optical measurement techniques, and pavements of the future (e.g. air purifying or as an energy source). He is an active member of RILEM, IIAV, ABAV and BRRC.

https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/staff/cedric-vuye/

Christa Reicher

RWTH Aachen University, Germany

Univ. Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Christa Reicher is founding partner of the planning office rha reicher haase architekten + stadtplaner since 1993, and since 2007 managing director of RHA REICHER HAASE ASSOCIATES GmbH in Aachen. From 2002 to 2018, she was head of the Department of Urban Design and Land-Use Planning, School of Spatial Planning at the Technical University of dortmund, and since 2018 she has been head of the Chair of Urban Design and the Institute for Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture at the RWTH Aachen University. Prof. Reicher studied architecture and urban planning at the RWTH Aachen and ETH Zürich. She is co-founder of the department of Urban Heritage Management of TU Dortmund.

Claudio Guarnaccia

University of Salerno, Italy

Claudio Guarnaccia is an associate professor of Applied Physics in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Salerno, Italy. His academic focus is primarily on environmental acoustics, noise pollution, and soundscape studies. He holds a Ph.D. in Physics and his research activity is focused on the application of Physics to Engineering, especially on Acoustics. He has developed extensive expertise in predictive modeling and data analysis, particularly related to urban noise and traffic noise prediction.
Claudio’s research spans multiple interdisciplinary fields. He is recognized for his work in road traffic noise modeling, where he has employed advanced techniques such as, among the others, microscopic and dynamic modeling, stochastic approaches, ARIMA models and artificial neural networks to forecast urban noise levels. His work on noise emission models for single vehicle and road traffic, as well as on development of eco-indicators, has supported equitable traffic management strategies. He has also contributed to a deeper understanding of how noise levels relate with human perception. For example, he has explored the relationship between sound pressure levels and how people perceive soundscapes in a university campus context.
In addition to his academic research, Claudio has collaborated on several international projects aimed at improving environmental conditions in urban areas. In 2019 he was appointed “NoiseCapture Ambassador”, within the Noise-Planet project at the Université Gustave Eiffel, France, for his merit in spreading the noise awareness among the students, involving them in crowdsourcing data and citizen science activities with the NoiseCapture app.
Beyond his academic contributions, Claudio is active in the scientific community as an editor and reviewer for various journals and conferences. He has published extensively in high-impact peer-reviewed journals and has been a key participant in interdisciplinary conferences related to acoustics, transportation, and environmental management. His collaborative efforts with colleagues across several countries all over the world have strengthened his role as a key contributor to understanding the impact of noise on urban and natural environments.

Dan Stowell

Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Dan Stowell is Associate Professor of AI & Biodiversity, jointly appointed at Tilburg University and Naturalis Biodiversity Center (NL).
Since 2012 he has led research on computational bioacoustics using machine learning and signal processing. He is the principal investigator
for the EU-funded “Bioacoustic AI” Doctoral Network, and co-investigator in multiple EU Horizon-funded bioacoustics projects.
http://mcld.co.uk/research/

Daniel Steele

City of Boston, USA

Eleanor Ratcliffe

University of Surrey, UK

Eleanor Ratcliffe is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Psychology at University of Surrey, and a British Academy Innovation Fellow (2024/25). Ellie’s research focuses on connections between the physical environment and human wellbeing, and especially the role of nature and nature soundscapes in supporting positive psychological outcomes. During her British Academy Fellowship she is working with the SME Tranquil City to co-develop, together with communities in UK cities, inclusive tools for the monitoring and evaluation of urban greening interventions that support tranquillity, wellbeing, and sustainable behaviour. Prior to undertaking this Fellowship Ellie has been the programme lead for MSc Environmental Psychology at University of Surrey, and she is a Board member of the International Association of People-Environment Studies (IAPS).

Erica Walker

Brown University, USA

Erica Walker is the RGSS Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health. She is interested in understanding how community noise issues and related environmental exposures both disrupt and promote health and well-being. She also runs Community Noise Lab, a research lab dedicated to supporting communities with their identified environmental issues with real-time monitoring; community surveying; environmental health literacy tools like her activity book series and her smartphone app, NoiseScore; laboratory experiments; and community engagement activities. As a public health practitioner, she truly believes in the Public in Public Health.

Fanny Mietlicki

Viginoiz, France

President of Viginoiz, Fanny Mietlicki is an acoustical engineer and environmental project manager. Fanny has worked on many environmental, health and technological development projects with the association Bruitparif, a non-profit organization that she runs since its creation in 2004. Bruitparif had been commissioned by the Île de France region to monitor noise pollution in the Parisian area.

Laudan Nooshin

University of London, UK

Laudan Nooshin is Professor of Music at City, University London. Her research interests include music and sound in urban space, with a particular focus on the city of Tehran; music and sound in Iranian cinema; contemporary developments in Iranian traditional and popular musics;  music and gender; and sound in museums and heritage spaces. She has published widely and is currently writing a book on the sounds of Tehran for a project supported by The Leverhulme Trust, https://www.sonictehran.com/. Laudan is co-founder of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies Network. In the 2023-24 academic year she was on an AHRC funded secondment working with the theatre and acoustic consultancy Charcoalblue on a project on sound and equity in public space.

Laura Estévez Mauriz

Universidad de León, Spain

Laura Estévez Mauriz is 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.

Martin Mcvay

Welsh Government, UK

Dr Martin McVay has worked in environmental policy and regulation for over 22 years, initially for the Environment Agency of England and Wales as a technical advisor on industrial air and noise pollution modelling, then from 2007 to 2024 as a policy advisor to the Welsh Government covering a range of environmental topics including noise and soundscapes, chemicals, air quality, industry regulation and urban green space. In particular, Martin has coordinated Wales’s national noise and soundscape plans in 2013, 2018 and 2023, revised its local air quality management guidance in 2017, and worked to embed soundscape principles in Wales’s planning policy and environmental legislation. In 2024 Martin took on a new role as Environmental Public Health Senior Policy Manager in the Welsh Government’s Public Health Directorate.

Martin Röösli

University of Basel, Switzerland

With a background in Environmental Science Martin Röösli is full professor for environmental epidemiology at Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute and University of Basel. He is head of the Environmental Exposure and Health Unit.

Martin Röösli’s research deals with a broad range of public health relevant national and global environmental health issues with a focus on noise research. He is conducting exposure assessment studies, epidemiological research and health risk assessments including systematic reviews in Switzerland and outside Europe. He was principal investigator of the SiRENE study and numerous other projects. Currently, he is investigating the health benefits of noise protection measure and is collaborator of the EU funded project MarkoPolo. From 2012 to 2023 he was member of the Federal Noise Abatement Commission.

Mathieu Lagrange

Nantes University, France

Mathieu Lagrange is a CNRS research scientist at LS2N, a French laboratory dedicated to cybernetics and computer science. He obtained his PhD in computer science at the University of Bordeaux in 2004, and visited several institutions, both in Canada (University of Victoria, McGill University) and in France (Telecom ParisTech, Ircam). His research focuses on signal processing and machine learning algorithms applied to musical or environmental audio analysis and synthesis.

Nadine Schütz

Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique, France

Nadine Schütz is a sound artist, landscape acoustician and researcher from Switzerland, based in Paris and Zürich. She explores the auditory environment like an interpreter; by listening to space and place as a creative score that informs and directs its own transformation. Her installations, compositions, and performances connect place-making and listening, nature and music, bodies and spaces. At an architectural and urban scale, she creates permanent acoustic designs and sound sculptures that participate tangibly in users’ daily experiences – through an original combination of techniques derived from bio- and psychoacoustics, music, landscape design and architecture.

Nadine Schütz holds a master in Architecture and a PhD in landscape acoustics, both from ETH Zurich, where she installed a pioneering studio for the spatial simulation of sonic landscapes at the Department of Architecture. She is a guest composer in the Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces and the Sound Perception and Design teams at IRCAM-STMS at Centre Pompidou in Paris and a visiting professor within the Sound-Image Research Group at Greenwich University in London.

www.echora.ch