Expertise and Interests
Scientific expertise
- Auditory Cognition
- Continuity Preserving Signal Processing (and its applications to e.g. speech processing)
- Perception, in particular auditory perception and models of perceptual attention
- Sound source recognition, in particular in normal - day-to-day - environments
- Verbal aggression detection in combination with camera-based surveillance
- Soundscape, in particular the automatic description of soundscapes
- Sound annoyance and sound related health effects, in particual the interaction between the sound and social/psychological factors
- Affect regulation, in particular associated with sound
- The role of cognitive science in geopolitics
Professional expertise
- Formulating and realizing a strategic vision
- Valorisation of knowledge in de Cognitive Sciences (commercial or otherwise)
- Development of strategic visions that connect science to society (e.g. for grant proposals, or policy development)
- Projects between university and non-academic partners
- Scientific modeling
- Scientific curriculum development, especially for Cognitive Systems programmes, but also for interdisciplinary programmes in general.
- Development of efficient, pleasant, and dedicated educational working environments (i.e., anti-bureaucracy measures)
Interests
My main interest is the question how we (humans and animals) are able to function in a complex world. Somehow we are quite able to deal with a world that is complex, in part unknown, variable, and unlimited. Fortunately the world is also structured and predictable, highly redundant, in part irrelevant, and to some degree alterable and controlable. Our cognitive system, actually all that makes us individuals, contributes to our ability to persist in a precarious world. I find it fascinating to study the processes that are involved in this phenomenon.
In some more detail my interests are:
- Auditory Cognition
- I model auditory cognition and augment this, sometimes, with experiments. In particular I model the processes that structure incomming sound in to the constituting sounds. In the accessible paper Audition: From Sound to Sounds I separate for example hearing and listening as separate processes. Hearing for orienting and the detection of the unexpected and listening for the analysis and estimation of the expected.
- Real world sound recognition
- When a theoretical model is sufficently well developed it can be implemented and tested on real-world input. For me it is essential not to simplify the recognition tasks too much. In particular I demand that my systems are able to work with with input sound of which they do not know what it will contain. This in stark contrast to normal engineering systems, like speech recognition systems, that can only function if a user supplies them with input they can process.
- Soundscape research and improving well-being in a (sonic) environment
- A soundscape is a sonic enviroment in which you are not only observer, but where you are an observer-participant. The sounds really have an impact on you, for better or for worse. Because some sounds can be very intrusive they can "steal" time you'd like to spend otherwise (e.g., for relaxing). For me this is the root cause of sound annoyance and sound related health-problems. I research ways to balance the benefits and costs of man-made sounds in our modern societies. I have written a paper about Soundscape and core affect regulation that outlines my current ideas about this.
- Cognitive System research and Autonomous Systems
- I am board menber of the FP7 network projects EUCognitionII (2009-2011) and its successor EUCognitionIII (2012-2014). This project involves community building for cognitive systems research. I like to think about how research in this field needs to be structured to be able to build artificial cognitive system that are able to operate in in dynamic, nondeterministic, real-life environments and as such truly autonomous.
I have written a paper for a EUCognition strategy meeting about Cognitivity as the ability to function autonomously in open environments - Cognitive Science, Geopolitics, and Human Nature
- Real political power is the ability to let (millions of) people act more for your benefit than for their own. Any pyramidal structured society has a huge majority of the population in the lower part of the pyramid that never learned the knowledge and skills to understand, let alone correct, the activities of the elite at the top. My interest is aimed at discovering the "laws" that allow elites to rule and force the rest of us to more marginal lives.