ORC Seminar Series

Speaker: Steve Elliott (Director, ISVR)

Date: 19 November 2008

Time: 2pm

Venue: Building 46 Lecture Theatre B

Abstract:

In this talk the variety of research work in the ISVR will be reviewed: from physical wave propagation in railway tracks and aircraft engines to the human response to vibration and audiology. The basis of “electrical hearing” via cochlear implants will be described, together with recent developments in models of the active and nonlinear sound propagation in the normal cochlea, including the effects of Rayleigh scattering.

Biography:

Steve Elliott graduated with first class joint honours BSc in physics and electronics from the University of London, in 1976, and received the PhD degree from the University of Surrey in 1979 for a dissertation on musical acoustics.

After a short period as a Research Fellow at the ISVR and as a temporary Lecturer at the University of Surrey, he was appointed Lecturer at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR), University of Southampton, in 1982.  He was made Senior Lecturer in 1988, Professor in 1994, and became Director of the ISVR in 2005.  His research interests have been mainly concerned with the connections between the physical world, signal processing and control, mainly in relation the active control of sound using adaptive filters and the active feedback control of vibration.  This work has resulted in the practical demonstration of active control in propeller aircraft, cars and helicopters.  His current research interests include modular systems for active feedback control and modelling the active processes within the cochlear.

Professor Elliott has published over 200 papers in refereed journals and 400 conference papers and is co-author of Active Control of Sound (with P A Nelson 1992), Active Control of Vibration (with C R Fuller and P A Nelson 1996) and author of Signal Processing for Active Control (2001).  He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, the IET and the IOA and a senior member of the IEEE.  He was jointly awarded the Tyndall Medal from the Institute of Acoustics in 1992 and the Kenneth Harris James Prize from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2000.