Photo: Mane Hovanissyan.

Gascia Ouzounian

University of Oxford

Presentation title / topic (tentative): The Trembling City

Gascia Ouzounian is a sound scholar whose work examines the relationships between sound, cities, architecture, and conflict. She is Associate Professor of Music at the University of Oxford and Principal Investigator of the ERC-funded Sonorous Cities project, which develops new approaches to sonic urbanism and rethinks the role of sound in architecture and urban design. She is the author of Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts (MIT Press) and The Trembling City: The Sonic and Atmospheric Violence of Vibrational Warfare (MIT Press, 2026). Working across sound studies, architectural theory, urban studies, and artistic practice, her research investigates listening as a political and spatial practice, examining how sound shapes the conflict, memory, and the production and experience of place. Her work combines scholarship, creative practice, and public engagement to develop new approaches to the sonic dimensions of architecture and urban life.

Jakob Abeßer

University of Bamberg

Presentation title / topic (tentative): From Music Recordings to Urban Soundscapes — A Cross-Domain Perspective on Spectral and Temporal Complexity

Jakob Abeßer has been Professor of Computational Humanities at the University of Bamberg since September 2025. He received his diploma in computer engineering from Ilmenau University of Technology in 2008 and completed his doctorate (Dr.-Ing.) in media technology there in 2014. In 2010, he was a visiting scholar at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. From 2012 to 2017, he was a research associate on the Jazzomat project at the Franz Liszt University of Music Weimar, and from 2008 to 2025 he worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology (IDMT), where he was appointed Senior Scientist in 2021. From 2021 to 2025, as part of his ongoing habilitation, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Semantic Audio Processing Group at the International Audio Laboratories Erlangen.

His research focuses on AI-assisted audio and music processing and its application in the digital humanities, with particular emphasis on music information retrieval, the detection and classification of acoustic scenes and events (DCASE), soundscape research, and bioacoustics and ecoacoustics.

Stefanie Rüttener

City of Zurich

Presentation title / topic (tentative): Caught Between Urban Densification, Traffic Noise, and Health Protection—Revision of the Environmental Protection Act in Switzerland

Stefanie Rüttener earned her degree in geophysics from ETH Zurich in 1988 and has been a certified acoustician from the Swiss Acoustical Society since 2010. She worked for over 25 years at various engineering companies in the environmental sector, specializing in noise control. Since 2013, she serves as Head of the Noise Control Division at the City of Zurich’s Department of Environment and Health. Stefanie Rüttener is the patron of the Noise Control Strategy adopted by the City Council in 2020, which addresses the areas of road traffic noise, noise prevention in planning and construction, and everyday noise. She is a member of the Federal Commission for Noise Control, heads the Noise Assessment Working Group of Switzerland’s national network Cercle Bruit, and serves on its board of directors.

Usue Ruiz Arana

Senior Lecturer in Landscape Architecture, Newcastle University

Presentation title / topic (tentative): Multispecies Cities: tuning and composing just landscapes through sound and listening

Usue is a chartered landscape architect, researcher, and educator at Newcastle University. Usue’s research is concerned with advancing Landscape Architecture as a discipline uniquely positioned to address planetary health, biodiversity and climate crises, and social and eco-justice. To that end, she researches in the cross-cutting fields of acoustic ecology, multispecies collaborations and research by design, and her publications (incl. monograph Urban Soundscapes) and creative outputs demonstrate an emerging international leadership in these fields. Her keen interest in design and art as forms of research informed her role as Thinking Eye editor of the Journal of Landscape Architecture (2021-2026).

Claudia Kawai

Empa, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology

Presentation title / topic (tentative): Noise annoyance due to drone noise

Claudia Kawai earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and Scandinavian Studies from Humboldt University of Berlin and a Master’s degree in Psycholinguistics from Bielefeld University. After working as a freelancer in Tokyo, she joined the Austrian Academy of Sciences as a DOC Fellow and completed her PhD in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Vienna in 2021, focusing on cross-cultural studies of implicit color-valence associations. She is currently a psychoacoustician in the Noise Impact Group at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, where she investigates the psychophysiological effects of noise from various sources. Having studied multiple sensory domains, from language and vision to hearing, her research explores how people experience and respond to their environment.

Maarten Hornikx

Eindhoven University of Technology

Presentation title / topic (tentative): Towards Auditory Realism in VR/AR Tools for Urban Environments: Technical Challenges and a Call for Meta-approaches

Maarten Hornikx is Full Professor of Building Acoustics, Vice-Dean of the Department of the Built Environment, and leads the Building Acoustics Chair of the Building Physics and Services (BPS) unit. He specializes in computational modeling of sound propagation in the built environment, with research spanning both methodological advances and applied acoustics. His work focuses on two major application areas: the development of sound reproduction techniques, enabling immersive acoustic simulations for built-environment design, and the use of numerical models to study environmental and architectural acoustics, including how vegetation, indoor and outdoor geometries and materials, and meteorological conditions influence sound propagation. He is also an advocate of open research software, actively promoting transparent and shareable computational tools to increase scientific impact and improve scientific standards.

Pierre Aumond

Université Gustave Eiffel

Presentation title / topic (tentative): The NoiseModelling Journey: From Strategic Noise Mapping to advanced Urban Sound Modelling

Pierre Aumond is a researcher in environmental acoustics within the Environmental Acoustics Research Unit (UMRAE, Université Gustave Eiffel, France). His research focuses on urban noise modelling and mapping, soundscape and perception, and the assessment of noise exposure in urban environments. For the past ten years, he has been closely involved in the development and animation of NoiseModelling, an open-source platform for environmental noise modelling and mapping. His research has progressively explored probabilistic and multisource modelling, temporal variability, data assimilation and uncertainty, or dynamic approaches linking noise exposure with urban mobility and individual behaviour.

Simon Jennings

Limerick City and County Council

Presentation title / topic (tentative): Noise and Soundscape in Limerick: Merging Community Engagement with Acoustics

A petroleum geophysicist turned environmental scientist with over 20 years of experience spanning the private sector and local government.

Education:
PG Dip in Acoustics and Noise Control | Institute of Acoustics (2017)
PhD, MSc, BSc in Petroleum Geology & Geophysics | Southampton, Imperial, and Kingston universities (1991–2001)

Work experience:
Simon began as a geophysicist working for an oil services company (2001–2003) before deliberately deciding to transition to a green career. At RPS Group Ireland, he worked as a GIS Expert and Hydrogeologist (2003–2008), managing geospatial analysis and hydrogeological modelling to support implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive for local government in Ireland. He has worked at Limerick City and County Council as an Environmental Scientist and Acoustic Specialist since 2008. He moved to the Environment Department, specialising in air, noise and water, and completed the PG Dip to support work on complex noise complaints, noise modelling and noise action planning. Since 2014, he has worked in the Environmental Strategy Section, concentrating primarily on air quality, noise mapping, noise action plan management, and environmental and soundscape expertise supporting broader efforts in green and blue infrastructure, recreation, transportation and the public realm.

Awards:
John Connell Soundscape Award (2025): Highly Commended by the Noise Abatement Society for the Castletroy Greenway Pilot Acoustic Study.
European Green Leaf Award (2020): Core member of the Limerick Council team that secured the European Commission title for environmental sustainability.

Professional affiliations:
MIOA: Member of the Institute of Acoustics (UK)
MAACI: Member of the Association of Acoustic Consultants of Ireland