OVERVIEW

THE 1ST GREATER BAY AREA - INTERNATIONAL ACOUSTICS SYMPOSIUM


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PRELIMINARY CONFERENCE SCHEDULE


Abstract Deadline: 8 November 2019 (closed)
Acceptance Notification: 28 November 2019
Early Registration: before 29 November 2019
Call for a special journal issue titled “Perception and Simulation of 3D Audio” in Displays (Elsevier)!

Virtual Reality (VR) has gone beyond being marketing gimmicks to accessible and impactful technology. However, most VR applications still lack good 3D audio. An excellent 3D audio interface requires thorough understanding of human perception; acoustic, signal processing and computational technology (including AI and machine learning).

This symposium brings delegates from psychology, acoustics, signal processing, and computer sciences under one roof to exchange experience and innovative ideas on 3D audio at Shenzhen, the Silicon Valley of China.

Major Themes

Psychology of Audio Perception
Machine Learning and Bio-inspired Models
Room Acoustic and Reverberation
Ambisonic Systems and Binaural Simulation
360 VR Audio: Recording and Reproduction
Smart Hearing Aids
Audio Scene Analyses





Symposium Chairs

Prof. Richard SO

Department of Industrial Engineering and Decision Analytics,
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology



Prof. Guangzheng YU

Department of Applied Physics,
South China University of Technology

International Technical Committee

Prof. Thushara-Abhaya, Australia
Prof. Jens Blauert, Germany
Prof. Jonas Braasch, United States
Prof. Felix Fei Chen, China
Prof. Lorenzo Picinali, United Kingdom
Dr. Becky Stewart, United Kingdom
Prof. Zengfu Wang, China
Prof. DeLiang Wang, United States
Prof. Bosun Xie, China



Conference Location

The conference will be hosted at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Shenzhen Research Institute. HKUST Shenzhen IER Building is located in the Shenzhen Virtual University, National University Park for Science and Technology. HKUST is among the first eight local and Mainland universities approved by the Shenzhen Municipal Government to establish bases in the Park. With a constructible area of 15,000 sq m, the seven-storey building is equipped with state-of-the-art research laboratories, lecture theaters, classrooms, multi-purpose rooms, lounges and landscaping gardens. Many research institutes and corporations have been operating in the Building. They include the HKUST Shenzhen Mechanical Engineering Laboratory which conducts research on construction energy and environment, LED packaging and module technology, and material testing; the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience which explores mechanisms of the brain and applications of research results to clinical treatment.The HKUST Shenzhen Research Institute (SRI) is a platform for R&D projects, executive trainings, and entrepreneurship. SRI also serves as a gateway between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, amongst government, tertiary institutions, industries, alumni and HKUST.



Special Journal Issue

Papers presented at this conference may be featured in a special journal issue of Displays (Elsevier) titled “Perception and Simulation of 3D Audio”.



Supporting Sponsors

Acknowledgement

The Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality for partially supporting the work under project no. JCYJ20170413173515472.



Dr. Becky Stewart

Dr. Becky Stewart is a Lecturer in the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London and was previously a Lecturer with the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) and Centre for Intelligent Sensing in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London. She completed a PhD with C4DM in 2010 on spatial audio signal processing and from 2011-2016 co-founded Codasign, an arts technology education company. Her current research centres around wearable technology with a focus on binaural audio and e-textile embedded systems. She also investigates methods for enabling research innovations to be more accessible to applications designers, helping to accelerate the moving of new technologies from the research lab into the hands of practitioners.



Prof. Bosun Xie

Prof. Bosun Xie is with South China University of Technology (SCUT). He has been the pioneer on Ambisonic system and is author of many papers in the field of Head-Related Transfer Functions, Ambisonic audio and spatial acoustics. He is the Vice-Chairman of the Acoustical Society of China.



Dr. Brian Katz

Dr. Brian Katz is a CNRS Research Director at the d'Alembert Institute, Sorbonne Université, CNRS, and coordinator of the Sound & Space research theme. His fields of interest include spatial 3D audio rendering and perception and room acoustics. With a background in physics and philosophy, he obtained his Ph.D. in Acoustics from Penn State in 1998 and his HDR in Engineering Sciences from UPMC in 2011. Before joining CNRS he worked for various acoustic consulting firms including Artec Consultants Inc., ARUP & Partners, and Kahle Acoustics. He has also worked at LIMSI-CNRS and IRCAM.



Prof. Thushara Abhayapala

Thushara Abhayapala is a Professor of Signal Processing at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra. He received his B.E. degree in engineering in 1994 and his Ph.D. degree in telecommunications engineering in 1999, both from the ANU. He held a number of leadership positions including Deputy Dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science (2015-19), Head of the Research School of Engineering at ANU (2010-14) and the leader of the Wireless Signal Processing Program at the National ICT Australia (NICTA) from 2005-07. His research interests are in the areas of spatial audio and acoustic signal processing, and multichannel signal processing. Among many contributions, he is one of the first researchers to use spherical harmonic based eigen-decomposition in microphone arrays and to propose the concept of spherical microphone arrays; novel contributions on the multi-zone sound field reproduction problem; was one of the first to show the fundamental limits of spatial sound field reproduction using arrays of loudspeakers and spherical harmonics. He worked in industry for two years, before his doctoral study and has active collaboration with Facebook, Dolby and Sony. He has supervised 36 PhD students and co-authored more than 280 peer-reviewed papers. He was an associate editor of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing and was a member of the Audio and Acoustic Signal Processing Technical Committee (2011–2016) of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He is a fellow of Engineers Australia (IEAust).



Prof. Felix Fei Chen

Prof. Felix Fei Chen received his PhD in electric engineering in The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2005. Later on, he continued his research as post-doctor and senior research fellow in States and Hong Kong, and moved to Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) as a faculty in 2014. Dr. Chen published over 80 journal papers and over 80 conference papers. He is now serving as associate editor/editorial member of three journals, including Frontiers in Psychology, Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, and Physiological Measurement. He worked as Leading Guest Editor for 2017 special issue of “Speech perception of Chinese-speaking cochlear implantees” in International Journal of Audiology.



Prof. ZengFu Wang

Prof. Zengfu Wang was born in 1960, Hefei, Anhui, P. R. China. He received the B.S degree from University of Science and Technology of China in 1982, the M.S degree from Nanjing Electronic Engineering Research Center in 1984, and the Ph.D degree from Osaka University, Japan in 1992, respectively. He is now a professor at University of Science and Technology of China and Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences. His research interests include computer vision, biometrics, affective computing, deep learning and intelligent robotics.



Prof. Qifeng Chen

Prof. Qifeng Chen is an assistant professor of CSE and ECE at HKUST. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 2017, and a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics from HKUST in 2012. His research interests are computer vision, machine learning, optimization, and AI audio. He is named one of 35 Innovators under 35 in China in 2018 by MIT Technology Review. He won the Google Faculty Research Awards in 2018. In 2011, he won the 2nd place worldwide at the ACM-ICPC World Finals. He also earned a gold medal at IOI 2007. He publishes frequently at ICCV, CVPR, and Interspeech.



Prof. Junfeng Li

Prof. Junfeng Li is a Professor at the Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Before joining CAS, he was an Assistant Professor at Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His research interests are speech signal processing, 3D audio technology, and deep learning application in speech processing. He was selected for the Hundred Talents Program of CAS in 2010. He also got the National Natural Science Fund of China for Excellent Young Scholars in 2017.



Prof. Nengheng Zheng

Prof. Nengheng Zheng is currently an associate professor at the College of Electronics and Information Engineering, Shenzhen University. He was an visiting scholar at the University of New South Wales, Australia and Chinese University of Hong Kong from whom he received his PhD in electronic engineering. His current research interests are deep learning based robust speech processing system such as ASR, Cochlear Implants, etc.



Registration

Registration Fees

The standard registration fee will be USD400 and a reduced fee of USD100 applies to full-time students. The standard registration covers all conference activities, including proceedings, reception, refreshments, lunches and banquet (not for student registration)

Cancellation Policy

All cancellations received in writing by 29 November 2019 will be 90% refunded, 10% of the total registration fee will be deducted for administrative expenses. 50% of the total registration fee will be refunded for cancellations received in writing between 30 November to 7 December 2019. No refunds will be made after 7 December 2019.

Accommodation

A wide range of accommodations are available in Shenzhen, starting from USD80 (3-star hotel) to USD180 (5-star hotel) per night depending on the location and facilities. Conference venue is at HKUST Shenzhen Research Institute, Hi-tech Park, Nanshan, Shenzhen, Post Code: 518057. The following are some suggested hotels and there are a lot more to be found in hotel.com.





INTERCONTINENTAL SHENZHEN

Inter-Continental Hotel next to the Splendid China Folk Culture Village (锦绣中华: 中国民俗主题公园). Double Room 167 USD per night Taxi: 15-20 mins to HKUST SRI, 20-30 RMB

KEMPINSKI HOTEL SHENZHEN

Kempinski Hotel (SZ) next to the Coastal City Shopping Mall (SZ). Double Room 100 USD per night Taxi: 15-20 mins to HKUST SRI, 20-30 RMB

Sightseeing in Shenzhen

Submissions

Abstract Submissions

Contributions on all aspects of user experiences with 3D audio and reproduction methods for oral presentations at the conference. An electronic form (in MS-Word or PDF format) of one-page abstract (a minimum of 200 words) with paper title, author names, affiliations, and the corresponding author's phone/fax number and e-mail address should be submitted to the Prof. Richard So via the email rhyso@ust.hk. As we only run a single oral presentation session, slots will be limited and early submissions are encouraged.

Abstract Deadline: 8 November 2019 (closed)
Acceptance Notification: 28 November 2019
Early Registration: before 29 November 2019
Call for a special journal issue titled “Perception and Simulation of 3D Audio” in Displays (Elsevier)!

Sponsors

Industry Sponsors

The symposium welcomes company sponsors. For a rate of USD2000, we will provide the following:
- 5 complimentary registrations.
- One booth table for the company to showcase their products, demos and services.
- Company logo and link to be displayed on our Symposium www site and acknowledgement as our Industry Sponsor.
- Private lunch session with Keynote speakers.

Supporting Sponsors

Acknowledgement

The Science, Technology and Innovation Commission of Shenzhen Municipality for partially supporting the work under project no. JCYJ20170413173515472.