Summer series "Prominent Researchers at RWTH" ☀️
No, you do not automatically hear better if you have ears that stick out. Differently, yes, but not better. It is not only the shape of the ears, but the entire geometry of one’s head that plays a role in Professor Janina Fels’ research. As head of the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics, she specializes in reproducing acoustic reality in the lab, using all the possibilities of virtual reality to carry out realistic hearing experiments.
A complex acoustic scene can be in a restaurant, a classroom, or an open-plan office – people talking, telephones ringing, chairs being moved, keyboards clacking, perhaps some music playing – there are a multitude of sound sources. Fels and her team model these acoustic environments and transport them to the lab using special simulation methods. Experiments can then be carried out to investigate the influences of individual parameters to gain a fundamental understanding of how people deal with certain situations and how sounds influence cognitive performance.
Janina Fels is the spokesperson for a Priority Program funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - German Research Foundation, which is in its second phase. AUDICTIVE, short for Auditory Cognition in Interactive Virtual Environments, is the name of this interdisciplinary program involving two other researchers from RWTH: Professor Torsten Kuhlen, a VR expert, and Professor Sabine Schlittmeier from the Institute of Psychology. Reality is now reproduced audio-visual and virtually to investigate how acoustic and visual components and other contextual factors affect the ability to interact with the scene, for example to move freely within it.
Janina Fels has headed the Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics since November 2020. Before this, she had been a Professor of Medical Acoustics at RWTH for eight years, having first completed her degree in electrical engineering (specializing in communications engineering) at the University in 2002 and her doctorate in 2008. 😀
Click here for the complete RWTH Annual Report 2023: ➡ www.rwth-aachen.de/report
📸 : Peter Winandy
#research #researcher #science #scientists #RWTH #Aachen #university
