Congratulations to CDE Research Engineer Sean Soraghan for successfully defending his thesis “A Perceptually Motivated Approach to Timbre Representation and Visualisation”. Congratulations also to his supervisory team Alain Renaud (Bournemouth University) and Ben Supper (ROLI) for supporting him throughout his EngD.

Sean’s research is briefly described here:

‘Current software interfaces for digital music production facilitate the design and manipulation of widely varying musical timbres. However, their interfaces are often complex and technical, presenting a cognitive barrier to some users. This research project aims at developing a perception-based approach to interface design by exploiting synaesthesic correlations between vision and hearing’.

Sean’s 3-year placement during the EngD was at ROLI. ROLI are a design-led technology company based in Dalston, London. Founded in 2009 by Roland Lamb, they make hardware and software products and services designed to increase the bandwidth of interaction between people and technology.

During his time as a CDE Research Engineer, Sean has also been very active within the Analema Group, a London-based art collective of artists, researchers, programmers and sound designers.

Sean is extremely happy with the viva result, and his CDE experience overall stating “The CDE has taken me around the world and introduced me to some amazing people. I’m hugely grateful to have been given the opportunity and I’d recommend it to anyone”.

Sean is now about to start a brand new exciting adventure as he has been offered a position at Audiokinetic, a software company that develops tools for interactive audio in the games and entertainment industry. Sean will be based in Montreal, Canada. We wish him well in the future.