Team

Catherine Guastavino is an Associate Professor at McGill University where she holds a William Dawson Research Chair. She received a Ph.D. in Psychoacoustics from the University of Paris (Pierre et Marie Curie) and post-doctoral training in cognitive psychology at McGill before joining the McGill School of Information Studies in 2005. She is a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) where she served as Associate Director for Scientific and Technological Research from 2007 to 2009, and an associate member of the McGill Schulich School of Music. Her research interests include soundscape, spatial audio, auditory localization, multisensory perception, and music perception and cognition. She is a member of the ISO working group on Soundscape (CAC/ISO/TC43/SC1). Her research is currently funded by the National Science Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, the Fonds de Recherche du Québec, and research and development grants with industry partners.

Daniel Steele is interested in design, planning, and decision-making processes centered on the consideration of urban sound. Beyond just looking at noise levels and noise pollution, he is exploring opportunities to integrate positive experiences with sound into the complex urban realm. Daniel’s graduate research focused on the gaps between research and practice, and his experience draws from years of working in the hearing sciences, soundscape, and urban design and planning. He currently serves as the research lead and project manager for Sounds in the City, and he also led the Musikiosk project in 2015, which featured a musical soundscape intervention. His work includes bringing knowledge about sound to non-expert decision makers and the public, by co-organizing a series of Montreal and Amsterdam soundwalks and leading workshops with local Montreal stakeholders on topics like the sounds of pedestrianization.

Daniel completed his PhD at McGill University’s School of Information Studies in 2018 with Dr. Catherine Guastavino. His thesis elaborated on the different conceptualizations of urban sound by urban planners and designers in North America and Europe. He has been a recipient of the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy and IPLAI’s Archie Malloch Fellowship for his work in mobilizing soundscape research. Prior to his PhD, Daniel trained in psychoacoustics and audio technology at Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he earned degrees in both mathematics and music. He also holds a Masters of Architecture in Urban Design from McGill and is a member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). Through various travel and exchange programs, he has worked on urban soundscape research in both North American and European contexts. Before returning to academia, he worked with hearing aids and music; beyond the technological aspects of hearing aids, an interest in environmental auditory perception led him to soundscapes.

Mr. Dumoulin is an acoustician currently working at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill University. After graduating with a master’s degree with projects in architectural and environmental acoustics from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, he worked as a consultant for several firms in Montreal. More recently, he was a Noise Control Officer with Montreal’s Plateau Mont-Royal borough, managing the noise complaints and problems for one of the densest and noisiest boroughs of Montreal. In 2014, he completed a second master’s degree at the research laboratory, CRITIAS, at the École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS, Montreal) with a research thesis that aims to develop an acoustic measurement system using smartphones. Since 2011, he has served as an advisor on a number of university research projects including Ryerson University’s Department of Architectural Science (architectural acoustics) and with McGill University/ÉTS as a technical lead for Musikiosk, a soundscape research project. His current research works focus on urban noise policies, architectural acoustics, and surround sound systems.

Christine Kerrigan is a MA candidate at UQÀM’s graduate school of design, and her thesis work focuses on collaborative design processes for urban design projects. She also holds a graduate degree from UQÀM in experience design (DESS en design d’événements), a Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in graphic design from the Art Institute of Boston and a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Colby College.

Christine has several years of professional experience directing, leading, managing, collaborating, designing and strategizing on design projects. She has worked for design firms in the US, such as Continuum, a Boston-based design consultancy, and has had her own design firm and clients as well. Her strengths lie in finding creative ways to solve problems and tell narratives and stories.

Christine aims to use her creative super powers to do good for the planet and the people on it. She is convinced that we can find better ways to design our cities through more collaborative processes and approaches between city officials, academia, citizens, and a variety of professionals in the public and private sectors.

Cynthia Tarlao is a PhD student at McGill’s School of Information Studies with Dr. Catherine Guastavino. Her thesis is on auditory motion perception during self-motion, for which she has received a CIRMMT Student Award. She holds degrees in physiology, neuroscience, and sensory analysis from Lyon University (France). She has been working with the Sounds in the City team on soundscape projects since 2015, including the Musikiosk project.

Edda Bild is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Her background is in urban sociology and her current work focuses on researching the relationship between the activities that public space users perform in their spaces and the ways in which they interpret and evaluate their auditory environments. The goal of her research is to provide insights that can be integrated in planning and design practices as well as to encourage sound awareness and promote ear-opening experiences among urbanites.

Richard is using Virtual Reality (VR) to help design better soundscapes. Soundscapes are best experienced in an immersive setting, rather than by observing a 2D screen, to fully appreciate the acoustic consequences of our designs. However, these designs often require expensive physical builds to test the acoustic consequences. Through VR, we can build, test, and modify these prototypes in a low-resource, immersive setting.

Richard is a PhD student at McGill University’s School of Information Studies, under professor Catherine Guastavino. He is affiliated with the Multimodal Interaction Lab (MIL) and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT). He is currently researching how to create more engaging user experiences with technology, and encourage effective human-computer interactions in spatial computing to solve real-world issues.

Prior to this, he served in Sheridan College’s Faculty of Applied Science and Technology (FAST) – Applied Computing. He has both an MSc and BA in Linguistics (University of Alberta & York University, respectively), an advanced diploma in Computer Programming and Analysis (Seneca College), and a certificate in Data Science (University of Toronto).

Sarah Bogdanovitch is a graduate student at McGill’s School of Communication Sciences and Disorders.  Sarah joins the Sounds in the City team with a strong interdisciplinary interest in the factors that facilitate or limit human communication, including recent work with Russian sign language and issues facing the Deaf community in Russia through a 2017 grant from the Fulbright Program.  She holds degrees in Russian Language and Comparative literature from Oberlin College (USA).