Dr. Gan Woon Seng

In this study conducted in Singapore, we aimed to enhance the urban soundscape by creating a soundscape intervention device. With the complex nature of the urban soundscape, it was crucial for the device to have the ability to sense the surrounding sound, select the most appropriate natural sound masker to mask negative noise (such as traffic noise), and adjust dynamically to changes in the acoustic environment.To achieve this, we utilized the power of cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide real-time listening and playback of the augmented sound via an array of ambisonics loudspeakers. The device features an innovative AI-based model to choose the optimal sound masker and determine its gain level, taking the burden offhuman supervision.We also created the Affective Responses to Urban Soundscapes (ARAUS) dataset to serve as a benchmark for evaluating models that predict and analyze soundscape perception. The working prototype of the system was first tested in a gazebo located in a university garden near a busy road, and several more units are being installed in residential areas to study the human response to the improved soundscape. By combining technolog

Biography:

 Woon-Seng Gan (SM) is Professor of Audio Processing and Director of the Smart Nation Lab in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He received his BEng (1st Class Hons) and Ph.D. degrees, both in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Strathclyde, UK in 1989 and 1993, respectively, and joined the faculty of Nanyang Technological University as a lecturer in 1993. He also served as the Head of the Information Engineering Division (2011-2014), and Director of the Centre for Infocomm Technology (2016-2019) at NTU.Prof. Gan served as Technical Program Chair, IEEE International Conference on Acoustic, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP 2022); Member, IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Directions Board (2021-2023); Member, Applied Signal Processing Systems Technical Committee (2021-2022); President-elect, Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA) (2023-2024); and General Chair, Asia Pacific of Signal and Information Processing Association Annual Summit and Conference (APSIPA ASC) (2017).Prof. Gan is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society (AES), and Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET). He is currently serving as Senior Area Editor, IEEE Signal Processing Letters (2019-); Associate Technical Editor, Journal of Audio Engineering Society (JAES; 2013-); Senior Editorial Member, APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing (ATSIP; 2011-); and Associate Editor, EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing (EJASMP; 2007-). He served as Associate Editor, IEEE Signal Processing Letters (SPL; 2015-19); Associate Editor, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing (TASLP; 2012-15); and was presented with an Outstanding TASLP Editorial Board Service Award in 2016. He was also a recipient of the 2017 APSIPA Sadoaki Furui Prize Paper Award.Prof. Gan’s research has been concerned with the connections between the physical world, signal processing and machine learning, and sound control, which resulted in the practical demonstration and licensing of spatial audio algorithms, psychoacoustic signal processing applied to the soundscape evaluation, audio intelligence monitoring at the edge, and active noise control for headphones and open apertures.

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