Excursion to the Theatre Comunale

Largo Respighi 1

Social Dinner – Trattoria Pizzeria Belle Arti

Via delle Belle Arti, 14, 40126 Bologna BO

We are delighted to announce that our keynote speakers this year will be: Boaz Rafaely, Jonathan Berger, and Philip Nelson.

Boaz Rafaely is a Professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel, where he leads the Acoustics Laboratory, conducting research in spatial audio signal processing. He has published over 200 papers in journals and conferences, and is the author of the book Fundamentals of Spherical Array Processing. Prof. Rafaely has previously served as Head of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at BGU, Chair of the Israeli Acoustical Association, and Chair of the Technical Committee on Audio Signal Processing of the European Acoustical Association. He has also been an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, and Acta Acustica. Title of Keynote: Spatial Audio Recording and Encoding with Wearables.

Jonathan Berger is the Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music at Stanford University. Berger is a composer of a wide range of genres including opera, orchestral, chamber, end electroacoustic music. He is also an active researcher, with expertise in computational music theory, music perception and cognition, psychoacoustics, and sonification. He has published over 70 academic articles in a wide variety of fields relating to music, science, and technology, including relevant work in digital audio processing in Neuron, Frontiers in Psychology, andthe Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. Among his awards and commissions are the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and commissions from Lincoln Center Chamber Music Society, the 92nd Street Y, The Spoleto Festival, the Kronos Quartet, and others. Berger is the Principal Investigator of a major grant from the Templeton Religion Trust’s Art Seeking Understanding initiative, to study the interplay of architectural acoustics and musical and ritual sound.

Philip Nelson holds the post of Professor of Acoustics in the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research at the University of Southampton. He has personal research interests in the fields of acoustics, vibrations, signal processing, control systems and fluid dynamics. He served from 2005-2013 as Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Southampton, with particular responsibility for Research and Enterprise. From 2014-2018 he served as Chief Executive of the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He is the recipient of both the Tyndall and Rayleigh Medals of the Institute of Acoustics and served as President of the International Commission for Acoustics from 2004-2007. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2018 New Year Honours for his services to UK Engineering and Science. Title of keynote: “Virtual acoustic imaging for multiple listeners”.