The EAA Summer School will take place from Saturday, September 5, until Monday, September 7, 2026, preceding the Forum Acusticum Conference at the facilities of Graz University of Technology (TUG) and University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG) at campus Inffeldgasse.
The Summer School is chaired by Katharina Groß-Vogt and Matthias Frank (Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, KUG) and Manfred Kaltenbacher (Institute of Fundamentals and Theory in Electrical Engineering, TUG).
The Summer School is composed of several course topics that will run in parallel and have the same duration. It is important to note that they will be taught in parallel, so attendees should register only for one specific topic according to their interests.
The preliminary program is scheduled for Saturday 5th afternoon, until Monday 7th noon:
Saturday 5
14:00-18:00
Topics (with coffee break)
18:00-18:30
Gathering with young acousticians/ÖGA
🌚
Evening in a bar
Sunday 6
09:00-12:00
Topics
12:00-13:00
Lunch
13:00-15:00
Career & World Café (with coffee break)*
*Program with sponsoring industrial partners on career development
Monday 7
09:00-12:00
Topics
12:00-12:30
Closing
12:30-13:30
Lunch
The registration fee of 130€ includes the access to the courses, 2 coffee breaks and 2 lunches.
The workload of completing the EAA summer school corresponds to one ECTS, for which a certificate will be issued.
How to register
Registration for the EAA Summer School is facilitated through the conference registration system. After indicating your interest in the ‘Summer School Participant’ section, you can select your chosen Hot Topic from the provided list.
Topics
Click on “+” to expand.
ST1 Fundamentals in Acoustics
Discover the fascinating science of sound in this EAA summer school designed for students with a strong interest on acoustics. The course begins with a thorough introduction to the fundamentals of vibrations and sound waves, covering essential concepts such as period, frequency, wavelength, and amplitude, providing a solid scientific foundation for further study. As the program progresses, students will explore more advanced topics, including acoustic levels, level calculation, harmonic content, and frequency spectra, gaining insight into how sound is analyzed, measured, and perceived in real-world environments. These concepts will be illustrated through practical examples drawn from music, environmental acoustics, and everyday soundscapes. Participants will also develop a clear understanding of the core principles governing sound propagation. Topics include the wave equation, sound transmission through air and solids, reflection, absorption, and diffraction, as well as the acoustic behaviour of different materials. Special attention will be given to sound absorbers and strategies for controlling noise. The summer school emphasizes hands-on learning, with interactive laboratory sessions and guided exercises using professional acoustic measurement and analysis tools. Students will apply theoretical knowledge to practical challenges, interpret measurement data, and gain valuable experience in experimental methods commonly used in acoustics.
Organizers
Christian Adams (TU Graz, Austria)
Bio
Christian Adams is a full professor at TU Graz, Austria and holds an endowed professorship on acoustics and environmental noise funded by the Federal Ministry BMIMI and Austrian companies. He is researching physical noise mechanisms at the source, simulation of noise propagation into the environment, noise impact research including psychoacoustics and health effects, as well as noise protection measures. Christian Adams is member of the Austrian Acoustics Association, several technical committees in Austria working on transportation noise, and deputy head of the Technical Committee Physical Acoustics of the German Acoustical Society.
Manfred Kaltenbacher (TU Graz, Austria)
Bio
Manfred Kaltenbacher is a full professor at TU Graz, Austria and head of the Institute of Fundamentals and Theory of Electrical Engineering. His main research interests are advanced finite element (FE) methods for multi-physics (magneto-mechanics, vibro- and aero-acoustics, and piezoelectrics) and combined experimental and simulation-based methods for material parameter determination (magnetics, acoustics, piezoelectrics). Manfred Kaltenbacher is Editor-in-Chief of Acta Acustica, Senior Editor of the Journal of Computational Acoustics and president of the Austrian Acoustics Association. For details see https://www.tugraz.at/institute/igte/institute/team/kaltenbacher
Lecturers
Same as organizers
Teaching and learning methods
Hands-on learning, with interactive laboratory sessions and guided exercises using professional acoustic measurement and analysis tools.
Exam mode
Written exam on Monday, just after closing of summer school
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Basic courses in physics and mathematics at university (bachelor level)
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
After completing the course, students will be able to apply theoretical knowledge to practically relevant problems, interpret measurement data, and will have valuable experience in experimental methods used in acoustics.
ST2 Room Acoustics Simulation and Auralization
The Hot Topic “Room acoustics simulation and auralization” will cover aspects of sound field simulation in rooms and processing options for auralization. Starting with an introduction to Geometrical acoustics and wave-based approaches, the course will cover the general concept of auralization, followed by the topic of filter synthesis of room impulse responses, including the processing of sound source and receiver directivities. Furthermore, aspects of interactive and real-time processing and binaural rendering are covered. Finally, we will discuss multiple aspects and systematic approaches for subjective and objective evaluation of virtual room acoustic environments. In addition to the lectures, the course will also include hands-on exercises, where participants will be able to create and listen to their own auralizations.
Organizers
Lukas Aspöck (RWTH Aachen University, Germany)
Bio
Lukas Aspöck is the academic manager at the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics at RWTH Aachen University, organizing and contributing to various research and teaching activities in the area of acoustic simulation and auralization. After receiving a diploma degree in computer engineering, he became a research assistant at the Institute of Technical Acoustics in 2013 and submitted his PhD thesis on the validation of room acoustic simulation in 2020. He is a member of the German Acoustics Association and the European Acoustics Association, where he is also the co-chair of the technical committee on Education. From 2019 to 2023, he was part of the steering committee of the Acoustical Knowledge Alliance (ASKnow), which created free online teaching material for five different courses on acoustics. Furthermore, he maintains the software RAVEN, a room acoustics simulation and auralization environment which is used by various researchers worldwide.
Marco Berzborn (TU/e, Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Bio
Marco Berzborn holds a M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering and is a doctoral candidate at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. His dissertation focusses on the spatio-temporal analysis and quantification of sound fields in reverberation rooms. His further research interests include microphone and loudspeaker array based analysis and synthesis methods for directionally dependent reverberation as well as inverse estimation methods for sound absorption.
Lecturers
Prof. Maarten Hornikx (TU/e, Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Prof. Annika Neidhardt (University of Applied Sciences, Mittweida, Mittweida, Germany)
Dr. Marco Berzborn
Dr. Lukas Aspöck
Teaching and learning methods
Hands-on learning, with code implementations of room simulation and auralization tasks.
Exam mode
Written exam on Monday, just after closing of summer school
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Basic courses in signal processing and (room) acoustics at university (bachelor level)
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
After completing the course, students will be able to apply theoretical knowledge of room acoustics and signal processing to create room acoustic simulations and auralizations.
ST3 Spatial Audio Production
This workshop offers a practical introduction to spatial music production, with a focus on both the artistic and technical dimensions of working with immersive audio. Participants will become familiar with current tools for spatial composition, explore recording techniques tailored to spatial formats, and develop approaches for crafting compelling and nuanced spatial mixes.
You can bring stems of your own music productions or use material provided by us. Depending on the setup, demonstrations and hands-on exercises will be conducted using either binaural playback over headphones or multichannel loudspeaker systems.
Organizer
Matthias Frank (Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM), University of Music and Performing Arts, Graz)
Bio
Matthias Frank is PostDoc at IEM and deals with virtual acoustics, Ambisonics, musical acoustics, and psycho acoustics. He studied electrical and audio engineering at Graz University of Technology and University of Music and Performing Arts (KUG) and graduated in 2009. In 2013, he finished his PhD at KUG about the perception of auditory events created my multiple loudspeakers.
Lecturers
Matthias Frank
Lukas Gölles (IEM)
Bio
Lukas Gölles is a researcher based in Graz. He studied Electrical Engineering and Audio Engineering at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. He completed his master’s degree in 2021 with a thesis on the curvature of arc-shaped sound sources. He subsequently pursued a PhD at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, focusing on immersive sound reinforcement technologies, which he successfully completed in 2025.
His research focuses on the development and optimization of spatial sound reinforcement systems, as well as on (immersive) recording techniques and online reproduction of three-dimensional audio content. In addition, he works on methods to improve the directional resolution of Ambisonic impulse responses.
Alongside his academic work, he is active as a sound engineer, combining research and practical application.
Felix Holzmüller (IEM)
Bio
Felix Holzmüller is a university assistant and PhD candidate in Sound and Music Computing at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM), University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (KUG), Austria. He received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Electrical and Audio Engineering, a joint program of KUG and Graz University of Technology, in 2019 and 2021, respectively. His research focuses on signal processing for active noise control, using both conventional techniques and neural networks. Since 2022, he has been the maintainer of the IEM Plug-in Suite for Ambisonic music production. He is a student member of the Audio Engineering Society and the Austrian Acoustics Association.
Thomas Röck (IEM)
Bio
Thomas Röck completed his inter-university studies in electrical engineering and sound engineering at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and Graz University of Technology in 2024. Since 2025, he has been working as a university assistant at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics (IEM), where he is also pursuing his doctoral degree. His research interests include audio signal processing, compact microphone and loudspeaker arrays, and the use of artificial intelligence in acoustic applications.
Teaching and learning methods
Introduction to theory behind spatial audio, particularly Ambisonics. Demonstration of spatial audio productions. Independent work of participants on their own productions with joint discussion in the end.
Exam mode
Short online test on the theory at the end of day 1. Presentation of the work created during the Summer School.
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Knowledge and hands-on experience with DAWs (preferrably REAPER)
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
After completing the course, students will have built theoretical knowledge on spatial audio formats, can evaluate and apply techniques for spatial audio recordings and know how to create spatial audio mixes.
ST4 Interpretable Machine Learning in Acoustics
This EAA summer school introduces participants to interpretable machine learning methods with applications in acoustics. The course highlights the importance of incorporating prior physical knowledge and consistency in data-driven acoustic modelling. The program begins with essential big-picture overview and key concepts in optimization that commonly appear in machine learning workflows. Participants then explore techniques for analysing complex acoustic data using dimensionality reduction methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD), including their physically informed variants. Probabilistic modelling with Gaussian processes is presented as a tool for surrogate modelling and uncertainty quantification in vibroacoustic predictions. The course further introduces data-driven discovery of governing equations using sparse regression and symbolic regression, demonstrating how interpretable mathematical models of acoustic systems can be derived from data. Finally, an overview of physics-informed deep learning in acoustics is given, including physics-informed neural networks and autoencoders, showing how physical laws can be embedded into learning models.
Organizer
Viktor Hruška (CTU Prague, Czech Republic)
Bio
Viktor Hruška is an assistant professor at CTU Prague, Czech Republic, where his primary academic responsibility is lecturing in general physics courses. His research focuses on the acoustics of inhomogeneous media, aeroacoustics, and nonlinear acoustics, with particular emphasis on theoretical and computational approaches integrated with applied machine learning techniques. He is a member of the Czech and German Acoustical Societies.
Lecturers
Viktor Hruška
Stefan Schoder (TU Graz, Austria)
Bio
Stefan Schoder is an associate professor at TU Graz, Austria, and leads the research group Aeroacoustics and Vibroacoustics at the Institute of Fundamentals and Theory of Electrical Engineering. His main research interests are fluid-structure-acoustic interaction problems in technical and biological applications, and hybrid methods that combine experimental data, expert knowledge, and simulation-based approaches to determine material parameters and super-resolve experimentally obtained field quantities. Stefan Schoder is Associate Editor for Aeroacoustics of Acta Acustica, the technical advisor for numerical acoustics of the Austrian Acoustics Association.
Aneta Furmanová (CTU)
Bio
Aneta Furmanová is a PhD student at CTU Prague, Czech Republic, with research interest in data-driven approaches and machine learning in physical acoustics. Recipient of Dean’s Award for Diploma Thesis and 1st place in IT Student Project of the Year. Aneta Furmanová is a member of Czech and German Acoustical Societies.
Tereza Filipská (CTU)
Bio
Tereza Filipská is a Master’s student at CTU Prague, Czech Republic. Her research interests lie in numerical modeling of nonlinear acoustic propagation and data-driven discovery of wave equations. She received the Dean’s Award for her Bachelor’s Thesis.
Teaching and learning methods
Each section includes roughly 45 minutes of lecture, 15 minutes of discussion, and 30 minutes of hands-on coding exercises using scripts provided on the course GitHub repository. Assistants are available during the practical sessions to keep activities running smoothly and to help participants overcome difficulties quickly.
Exam mode
Written exam on the last afternoon of the summer school
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Basic undergraduate courses in calculus and linear algebra are required. Knowledge of probability and statistics is good but not essential. All scripts will be provided, but a basic familiarity with Python is beneficial and recommended.
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
After completing the course, participants will be able to apply the chosen machine learning methods to problems of wave phenomena in acoustics and understand the benefits and limitations of different data-driven approaches.
ST5 Computational Acoustics
The course provides an introduction to numerical methods for acoustics, beginning with the theoretical foundations of the acoustic wave equation and its formulation within the finite element method (FEM). Participants will develop a solid understanding of FEM theory, including discretization and boundary conditions. Building on this foundation, the course introduces the boundary element method (BEM) and highlights its applications, particularly in exterior and radiation problems.
Theoretical concepts are complemented by hands-on practical sessions using the open-source simulation framework openCFS. Through guided exercises, participants will apply FEM to solve acoustic wave problems, explore model setup and meshing strategies, and analyze simulation results for realistic engineering scenarios. Special emphasis is placed on room acoustic simulations, where FEM and BEM approaches are used to study sound propagation, reflection, absorption, and modal behaviour in enclosed spaces.
Participants will gain experience in selecting appropriate numerical methods, interpreting simulation results, and understanding the physical implications for room acoustics. Upon completion, students will be equipped with both the theoretical insight and practical skills needed to perform and critically assess modern acoustic simulations in research and engineering applications.
Organizers
Stefan Schoder (TU Graz, Austria)
Bio
Stefan Schoder is an associate professor at TU Graz, Austria, and leads the research group Aeroacoustics and Vibroacoustics at the Institute of Fundamentals and Theory of Electrical Engineering. His main research interests are fluid-structure-acoustic interaction problems in technical, medical, and biological applications, and hybrid methods that combine experimental data, expert knowledge, and simulation-based approaches to determine material parameters and super-resolve experimentally obtained field quantities. Stefan Schoder is Associate Editor for Aeroacoustics of Acta Acustica, the technical advisor for numerical acoustics of the Austrian Acoustics Association.
Dominik Mayrhofer (TU Graz, Austria)
Bio
Dominik Mayrhofer is a senior scientist at the Institute of Fundamentals and Theory in Electrical Engineering at TU Graz, Austria. His major research interests include advanced finite element and numerical simulation methods for acoustics and linearized compressible flows, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) design and modeling, multi-physical interactions on moving domains, and sound generation principles for miniaturized loudspeakers. In addition to his research, he serves as a peer reviewer for international journals and is a member of the Austrian Acoustics Association and the German Acoustical Society.
Lecturers
Stefan Schoder
Dominik Mayrhofer
Marcus Mäder (TUM, Germany)
Bio
Maarten Hornikx (TU/e, Eindhoven, The Netherlands)
Bio
Maarten Hornikx is a Full Professor Building Acoustics, Vice-Dean of the Department of the Built Environment, and he leads the Building Acoustics Chair of Unit Building Physics and Services (BPS). Hornikx’ research area is computational modeling sound propagation in the built environment. He has two target applications. First, development of sound reproduction in mixed reality platforms with applications in the built environments. Second, application of numerical models to investigate all kinds of propagation effects as the role of vegetation on sound propagation outdoors and indoors and the influence of meteorological effects on sound propagation.
Teaching and learning methods
Each section includes roughly 45 minutes of lecture, 15 minutes of discussion, and 30 minutes of hands-on coding exercises using scripts provided on the course GitHub repository. Assistants are available during the practical sessions to keep activities running smoothly and to help participants overcome difficulties quickly.
Exam mode
Written exam on the last afternoon of the summer school
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Basic undergraduate courses in calculus and linear algebra are required. Knowledge of probability and statistics is good but not essential. All scripts will be provided, but a basic familiarity with Python is beneficial and recommended.
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
After completing the course, participants will be able to apply the chosen machine learning methods to problems of wave phenomena in acoustics and understand the benefits and limitations of different data-driven approaches.
ST6 Toolboxes for auditory research
Auditory research requires many tools, ranging from frameworks for psychoacoustic experiments to toolboxes for spatial-audio signal processing. Research in ecologically-valid extended reality requires the consideration of multisensory perception, involving toolboxes designed for auditory-focused but multisensory stimulation. This hot topic aims to equip participants with versatile tools to enhance their research across the full spectrum of auditory science.
To this end, we will introduce the SOFA Toolbox for spatially oriented data and the auditory modeling toolbox (AMT) which offers a variety of auditory models, from loudness to sound localization. We will also demonstrate the binaural rendering toolbox (BRT), the real-time simulated open-field environment (rtSOFE) for rendering virtual sound sources with their reflections, and the room acoustics simulators (RAZR and liveRAZR) to easily create perceptually plausible immersion. Finally, we will present the brain virtual interactivity platform (BRAVI) focused on the associations between psychophysiological states and the multisensory characteristics of virtual environments. Each module includes hands-on sessions guided by on-site experts to provide immediate practical value.
Organizers
Piotr Majdak, Acoustics Research Institute (ARI), Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)
Bio
Piotr Majdak studied electrical and audio engineering at the University of Technology and the University of Music and Performing Arts, both in Graz, Austria. In 2008, he received his Ph.D. degree in “Psychoacoustics and signal processing”. He works at the Acoustics Research Institute (ARI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences at a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying spatial hearing. Piotr published over 50 journal articles and contributed more than 160 times at scientific conferences. Computer algorithms, toolboxes, and reproducible research are his keys to reaching out, see amtoolbox.org and sofaconventions.org.
Katharina Pollack, Acoustics Research Institute (ARI), Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW)
Bio
Katharina Pollack studied electrical engineering audio engineering at the Technical University and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz and finished her PhD in sound and music computing at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz in 2026. She is currently a PostDoc at the Acoustics Research Institute at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and her main research interest is spatial hearing and individual head-related transfer functions. She is an active member of the Austrian Acoustics Association (AAA), the Austrian section of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and the Austrian section of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineering (IEEE).
Lecturers
Piotr Majdak
Katharina Pollack
Fabian Brinkmann (TU Berlin, Germany)
Bio
Fabian Brinkmann heads the Binaural Processing and Perception team in the Audio Communication Group at Technische Universität Berlin, where he earned his Ph.D. in 2019. His research focuses on signal processing and evaluation approaches for spatial audio, including perception- and model-based evaluations, as well as the development of algorithms for room acoustic simulation and binaural rendering. He is also one of the developers of the Python packages for acoustics research (pyfar).
Stephan Ewert (Uni Oldenburg, Germany)
Bio
Stephan D. Ewert studied physics and received the Ph.D. degree from the Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany, in 2002. During his Ph.D. project, he spent a 3-month stay as a Visiting Scientist with the Research Lab of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA. From 2003 to 2005, he was an Assistant Professor with the Centre of Applied Hearing Research, Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark. In 2005, he re-joined Medizinische Physik at the Universität Oldenburg, where he has been the Head of the Psychoacoustic and Auditory Modeling Group since 2008. His field of expertise is psychoacoustics and acoustics with a strong emphasis on perceptual models of hearing and virtual acoustics. He has authored various papers on spectro-temporal processing, binaural hearing, and speech intelligibility. He also focused on perceptual consequences of hearing loss, hearing-aid algorithms, instrumental audio quality prediction, and room acoustics simulation.
Massimiliano Masullo (Università degli Studi della Campania, Italy)
Bio
M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and Acoustics and Noise Control. Associate Professor of the Department of Architecture and Industrial Design of Università degli Studi della Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”. Scientific responsible of the multisensory laboratory SENS i-Lab. Member of the research groups Acoustics, Vibration and multisensory Interactions (ACOUVI) and Energy Efficiency & Environment (E3). He is the author of more than 200 scientific publications on acoustics and building physics, which include chapters in books, papers in international journals, proceedings of international conferences. His research activity is focused on investigate the perception, interaction, and responses of individuals to noise in build environment mainly through the: i) Simulation and design of multisensory, hybrid and Immersive Virtual Reality Environment; ii) Development of participatory methods, tools/platform for human centred studies; iii) Experimental sessions on the perceptual, emotional, and physiological responses and their effects. He serves as a reviewer for many international journals and various research bodies. He is member of the editorial board of scientific journals.
David Meijer (ÖAW)
Bio
David Meijer works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Acoustics Research Institute (ARI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna. His research interests are Bayesian inference in perceptual decision making and dynamic sound localization. He received his PhD in 2019 at the psychology department of the University of Birmingham (UK) where he evaluated probabilistic models of audiovisual integration and metacognition. Before that David studied technical medicine at the University of Twente in The Netherlands. Throughout his studies and scientific career, he has applied computational modelling to analyse measurements of the human body and mind, be it electrophysiological signals, behavioral psychophysics, or other forms of data.
Michael Mihocic (ÖAW)
Bio
Michael Mihocic holds degrees in “Electronics” and “Innovation & Technology Management”. Since 2005, he has been a researcher at the Acoustics Research Institute (ARI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna, focusing on spatial audio, sound localization, and auditory perception within the Hearing group. His work involves developing specialized software, standards, and toolboxes, notably the SOFA (Spatially Oriented Format for Acoustics), the SONICOM Ecosystem, and AMT (Auditory Modeling Toolbox). He designs and conducts psychoacoustical experiments and performs acoustical measurements in several fields (humans, loudspeakers, rooms, traffic). Michael also maintains the ARI’s Lab, ensuring optimal research infrastructure. He is an active member of the audio engineering community, serving on the board of the Austrian Section of the Audio Engineering Society (AES Austria).
Arcadio Reyes (University of Málaga, Spain)
Bio
Arcadio Reyes-Lecuona is telecommunication engineer (BSc+MSc), PhD in telecommunication engineering and psychologist (BSc+MSc). He is currently the head of DIANA research group, focusing his research in binaural audio for eXtended Reality and Psychoacoustics. He has been the main researcher of the University of Malaga contribution to several national and European projects in the field of virtual reality, like 3D Tune-In project (3D-games for TUNing and lEarnINg about hearing aids), SONICOM (Transforming auditory-based social interaction and communication in AR/VR) and MusicSphere (A Multimodal Approach for Digitizing, Analyzing, and Simulating Traditional Musical Organs Through 3D Technologies, Acoustic Analysis and Interactive Experiences). He was the technical coordinator of the 3D Tune-In Audio Toolkit and the Binaural Rendering Toolbox and is author of several publications about the topic in journals and conferences. He is the leader of the Malaga project at AABBA (Aural Assessment By means of Binaural Algorithms).
Bernhard Seeber (TUM, Germany)
Bio
Bernhard U. Seeber received the Dipl.-Ing. degree in electrical engineering and information technology and the Dr.-Ing. degree with distinction from the Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, in 1999 and 2003, respectively. Next, he was a post-doc at the Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley, USA. In 2007, he joined the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Nottingham, UK, to lead the Spatial Hearing lab. Since 2012, he is the head of the Audio Information Processing lab and Professor in the Department of Computer Engineering at TUM. He has worked on virtual acoustics since his PhD, developed selection techniques for head-related transfer functions, the Perceptually Equalized Panning technique, real-time room acoustic simulation and auralization tools (rtSOFE) and several setups for sound field synthesis. His research foci are on signal processing for hearing aids and cochlear implants, on spatial hearing and on non-destructive acoustic testing.
Prof. Seeber is a member of the German Acoustical Society (DEGA), the Association for Electrical, Electronic & Information Technologies (VDE), the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Association for Research in Audiology (ARO) and the Bernstein Network for Computational Neuroscience. He heads the technical committee on hearing acoustics in the Society for Information Technology (ITG/VDE) and was member of the executive board of the DEGA from 2016 to 2022. He received the Lothar-Cremer award of the DEGA, the doctoral thesis award of the ITG and the ITG publication award.
Chiara Visenti (Università degli Studi della Campania, Italy)
Bio
Teaching and learning methods
In each workshop, the aim is to show students how to use a toolbox for their own research. Each workshop will consist of a brief theoretical lecture and then a longer session of hands on to solve some tasks.
Exam mode
Written exam on Monday, just after closing of summer school.
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Basic courses in signal processing and hearing at university (bachelor level)
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
After completing the course, students will be able to use various toolboxes related to auditory research.
ST7 How to build innovative and consistent acoustic guitars
In this session of the summer school students will explore how acoustic guitars can be measured consistently and economically in terms of low cost equipment and short time or real time measurements. Examples of models to predict the response of a steel string guitar will be presented and discussed together with innovative ideas on how to build instruments considering different tonal targets and/or environmental impact
Organizers
Ludovico Ausiello (University of Portsmouth, UK)
Bio
Music and engineering are at the core of my life and education since I was a teenager. I started recording and producing sessions on a four-track tape machine, while I was studying piano, guitar and bass.
I pursued an Integrated Masterʼs Degree in Electronic Engineering at the University of Bologna. It meant six years of analog and digital signal processing, circuit design, amplification technology, data transmission systems and, at the same time, bands, music and concerts.
I included among my subjects applied acoustics, which was mainly focused on architectural acoustics and measurement systems. This further nurtured my passion for music production; it fed my curiosity about the physical locations where music is created, reproduced, recorded and, most importantly, heard.
I then started a European PhD program. My research focused on analog-to-digital converters, lossless data compression and innovative high quality music formats, including and surpassing the Super Audio CD standard. Some of the findings were presented at an AES convention in Paris, where I luckily met my future mentor, professor Angelo Farina.
During my PhD years I also enjoyed working at Maserati where I held the post of Sound Quality Engineer; this experience naturally left me strong communication skills, team work principles and the foundations of quality processes and procedures.
At the end of my PhD I decided to improve my self-learned mixing and mastering skills, and I attended a professional training at Fonoprint Studios in Bologna. This is one of the largest Italian recording facilities where artist in the like of Ramazzotti, Pausini, Zucchero have produced part of their catalogue.
After this long and diverse educational experience I started to work as teaching assistant of analog and digital oscillator design at the University of Bologna. This period during which I could practice both sound engineering and teaching was possibly one of the most rewarding moments of my life.
I had the chance to share my passion for music, innovation and technology with students and researchers inside and outside the academic context.
After that, I started a professional collaboration with Magneti Marelli as a research associate, with the tutorship of professor Farina. This eventually snowballed into my career in the audio industry, where I worked for Harman, Tannoy and other loudspeaker manufacturers as system designer and R&D engineer.
In 2018 I returned to academia and I joined Solent University where I held the post of Senior Lectuere in Audio and Acoustics. I completed my PGCert in 2019 and received the fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. I’m also member of the Institute of Acoustics, which is the UK professional body in the sector. In 2021 I joined University of Portsmouth as senior lecturer in Electronics, while still pursuing my research interests in audio, signal processing, electro-acoustics, innovative manufacturing.
Sebastian Duran (University of Bologna, Italy)
Bio
I am a PhD student at University of Bologna within the NEMUS ERC project. Board member at the Young Acousticians Network (YAN) under the European Acoustics Association. Student member of the Institute of Acoustics (IOA), UK.
Lecturers
Same as organizers
Teaching and learning methods
Class discussion, video, live demo
Exam mode
Oral Exam – discussion
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Use of Lumped Element modelling, Basic fundamentals of acoustics
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
Main learning outcome is to learn how the sound is generated/filtered/propagated in an acoustic guitars. Second learning outcome is how to apply standard measurement in the type of ISO3382 to any acoustic instrument (sine-sweep and pink noise real-time technique)
ST8 Neural Representations for Sound and Music
The capacity of neural networks to learn compact, meaningful representations of audio has transformed how machines process, analyse, and generate sound. This hot topic introduces participants to the landscape of modern neural audio representations — what they are, how they are trained, and how they can be applied and adapted to problems in acoustics, music, and beyond. The course begins with an overview of the three dominant families of models: variational autoencoders (VAEs) such as RAVE, which learn continuous latent spaces suitable for synthesis and timbre transfer; neural audio codecs based on residual vector quantization (RVQ) such as EnCodec and DAC, which compress waveforms into discrete tokens enabling generative modelling; and self-supervised transformer models such as MERT and HuBERT, which learn rich semantic representations from large unlabelled audio corpora. We will discuss what each architecture captures — acoustic texture, pitch, semantic content, temporal structure — and how these properties relate to classical audio descriptors familiar from signal processing. The second part of the course surveys practical applications of these representations: automatic tagging and classification, anomaly detection in mechanical and industrial sound, blind estimation of room acoustic parameters, music recommendation, and audio-language retrieval using contrastive models such as CLAP. A recurring theme is the surprising transferability of general-purpose audio representations to acoustics-specific tasks, including reverberation estimation and environmental sound monitoring, without any task-specific training. The final part of the course addresses the question of adaptation: given a pretrained model and a new acoustic domain or dataset, what is the most effective strategy? Participants will work hands-on through the full pipeline from frozen feature extraction and linear probing to parameter-efficient fine-tuning with LoRA, using an open benchmark dataset of their choice. Each module combines a theoretical lecture with guided coding exercises in Python using publicly available models and datasets.
Organizers
Anna Aljanaki, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria
Paul Bereuter, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Austria
Bio
Anna Aljanaki is a Professor of Computational Methods in Time-Based Arts and Musicology at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics, KUG, Graz. She has obtained her PhD from Utrecht University, Netherlands in 2016 on the topic of machine learning methods applied to music emotion recognition. Since then her research sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, music perception, and computational creativity. She worked at the University of Geneva, Johannes Kepler University Linz and University of Tartu. Her work spans music emotion recognition, symbolic music analysis,
generative music systems, and digital musicology (in collaboration with ethnomusicologists and
artists). She teaches Digital Musicology, Data Science, and co-wrote a textbook on Data Science.
Bio
Paul A. Bereuter received a joint Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Audio Engineering from the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and Graz University of Technology in 2022. He is currently working towards his PhD at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. In 2023 he received the Student Award from the German Acoustical Society (DEGA). In 2024 he was awarded the Marietta Blau-Grant by Austria’s Agency for Education and Internationalisation (OeAD) to conduct a six-month research visit at the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing at the University of Surrey in Guildford, UK, under the supervision of Prof. Mark D. Plumbley. In 2025, he was a research scientist intern at Meta’s Reality Labs Research in Redmond, Washington, USA. His research interests include musical source separation, speech enhancement, music information retrieval, and the application of deep learning to acoustics and audio-related tasks.
Lecturers
Same as organizers
Teaching and learning methods
Each module consists of a lecture introducing the key concepts and model architectures, followed by hands-on coding sessions in Python. Participants will use publicly available pretrained models via HuggingFace, inspect learned representations, and fine-tune models on target tasks.
Exam mode
Hackathon and projects in teams on the second day
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Basic courses in signal processing and mathematics at university (bachelor level). Familiarity with Python is beneficial.
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
After completing the course, participants will understand the principal families of neural audio representations, be able to select an appropriate pretrained model for a given acoustic task, and have practical experience adapting such models to new domains through fine-tuning on real datasets.
ST9 Design of acoustic absorbers and diffusers based on optimized parametric design approach
The aim of the workshop is to help the participants gain knowledge on optimized parametric design approaches for the development and fabrication of complex designs for acoustic absorbers and diffusers with improved and controllable performance. The workshop combines a multidisciplinary experimental (hands-on) and digital approach aiming to train participants with different backgrounds (engineering, design or architecture). The participants of the workshop will gain knowledge through both lectures and practical activities, such as group work collaboration on different phases (design, simulation and fabrication) required to achieve a highly performing acoustic material through creativity. The organizers’ goal is to introduce a workflow of the acoustic optimization process of acoustic surfaces in an easy, engaging and understandable way, and to highlight the potentials of new approaches in integrated acoustical design. The students will have the opportunity to work in teams and fabricate and test their design ideas.
Organizers
Louena Shtrepi (Politecnico di Torino, Italy)
Bio
Louena is an Associate Professor at the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, in the Department of Energy “Galileo Ferraris”. She holds a university degree in architecture from both the Politecnico di Torino and the Politecnico di Milano. Moreover, she obtained the Alta Scuola Politecnica diploma in 2010 as part of her master’s degree. She received her PhD degree in 2015 in Metrology: Measuring Science and Techniques, and she was awarded the Newman Medal (Newman Student Award Fund and Acoustical Society of America) for excellence in the study of acoustics and its application to architecture. Her research and teaching interests fall into the field of applied acoustics, and more specifically into the field of room acoustics and building acoustics. Since 2012, she has been working on the properties of acoustic materials, acoustic simulations and measurement uncertainties. Furthermore, the aim of her research is to raise awareness about acoustic issues and solutions, from the early stages of the design process, by actively involving architects and designers.
Milena Stavric (TU Graz, Austria)
Bio
Milena is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Architecture and Media (IAM) at Graz University of Technology. Her research focuses on the intersection of architectural geometry, digital design methods, and material-based performance, with a growing emphasis on acoustic behavior in architecture. She investigates how bio-based composites, porous materials, and digitally fabricated structures can enhance spatial acoustics while supporting sustainable construction practices. Her work combines parametric design, robotic fabrication, and additive manufacturing to develop materials and systems that integrate acoustic, ecological, and structural performance. Internationally active as a researcher and lecturer, she has contributed to numerous funded research projects and exhibitions, and has supervised a wide range of master’s and doctoral theses exploring material innovation and performance-driven design.
Arthur Van Der Harten (ORASE, USA)
Bio
Arthur has been a practicing acoustics consultant for nearly two decades, and in that time has gained experience in a wide range of building types, and solving a broad spectrum of problems. Concurrently, he has also been running the Pachyderm Acoustical Simulation open source software project, and the non-profit open source provifder ORASE. In his time working in the non-profit open source sector, he has had the pleasure of meeting some of the brightest and most talented people who could be using the software. He has worked as an acoustical consultant at Kirkegaard Associates in Chicago, The Foster + Partners Specialist Modelling Group in London, and Acoustic Distinctions/TLC engineering in New York. Arthur has contributed his expertise on high profile projects such as the Koningin Elizabethsaal in Antwerp, Hamer Hall in Melbourne, Apple Campus II in Cupertino, The Bloomberg Square office building in London, the TCU Van Cliburn Concert Hall, and many other high performing buildings. Arthur regularly lectures at architecture firms and for academic workshops in acoustics and computational design worldwide.
Lecturers
Same as organizers
Teaching and learning methods
Workshop (lectures, students’ design tasks, simulations, measurements in-field, analysis)
Exam mode
Design, characterization and fabrication of a prototype sample
Previous knowledge expected of the students
Students are expected to have previous knowledge in one of the following areas:
- Acoustic materials
- Acoustic simulations
- 3D modelling
- Parametric design
Objective (Expected results of the summer school and acquired competences)
- Acoustic absorbers and scattering surfaces design principles
- Parametric modelling for acoustic components
- Acoustic simulation and performance prediction
- Fabrication-aware design