NSF Award
2230504
This is funding to support a one-day "Think Tank" (virtual workshop) of about 10 promising graduate student scholars along with five distinguished research faculty mentors on Friday, June 24, in conjunction with this year's meeting of the International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2022), which will be held virtually on June 25–27, 2022. Historically, auditory displays have been overlooked in favor of visual information displays, but technological advances in the last several decades have opened new possibilities for the delivery of audio information in human-machine systems. Well-designed auditory displays can play a vital role in improving human performance with systems, in making information accessible and inclusive (e.g., for people with visual impairments), and in providing new, exciting, fulfilling opportunities for human-machine interactions. As such, auditory displays and sonification have been deployed in such diverse applications as assistive technologies, desktop and mobile devices, automotive user interfaces, medical devices, computer music, and artistic installations. As a relatively young field, auditory display research has a still-emerging potential to make valuable contributions to science and society. Achieving this potential requires the on-going development of a base of scientific, engineering, and artistic knowledge by a community of people with specific expertise and interest in sound as a medium for information display. Decades of research and practice have shown that the effective use of auditory displays requires a deep understanding of how humans create, perceive, and use sounds,, and for the last 3 decades ICAD has been the premiere venue for the discussion and dissemination of the intellectual products of auditory display research. Normally an in-person meeting, the 2020 conference was cancelled due to the onset of the pandemic, and the 2021 event was forced to assume a virtual format, which was highly successful, so a similar format will again be employed this year when the conference theme is "sonification that can be used to maintain awareness." More details about ICAD 2022 are available online at https://icad2022.icad.org/. The ICAD Think Tank is a doctoral consortium that promotes scholarship and networking among new researchers in this important emerging interdisciplinary area. There are three objectives: To support the research efforts and professional development of students who are studying auditory displays and sonification; To provide specific feedback and potential solutions to barriers those students are facing in their research projects; To develop and sustain a community of early career researchers of auditory displays.<br/><br/>To these ends, the Think Tank will provide a friendly and open, yet rigorous, scientific forum in which participants can present their research ideas, listen to ongoing work from peers and receive constructive feedback from a panel of distinguished experts. Panel feedback is designed to help students understand and articulate how their work is positioned relative to related research, whether their topics are adequately focused for thesis research projects, whether their methods are correctly chosen and applied, and whether their results are appropriately analyzed and presented. The Think Tank will also offer invited speakers and discussion groups (e.g., to provide students with relevant information about important issues for doctoral candidates, whether they are considering academic or industrial career paths). Thus, the Think Tank will help shape ongoing and future research projects that have clear and important implications for development of assistive technologies and universal access. It will bring together students from diverse disciplines (such as engineering, computing, music, and psychology), so that they can experience the broad spectrum of approaches to auditory displays, assistive technologies and universal design. It will afford participants exposure to a larger community, allowing them to bond among themselves and with senior researchers at a critical stage in their professional development. Because the students and faculty constitute a diverse group across a variety of dimensions, including nationality and culture, scientific discipline, and institution, the students' horizons are broadened to the future benefit of the field. The organizers will be proactive in promoting diversity among Think Tank attendees; every effort will be made to recruit and select participants who represent the diversity of ICAD, broadly defined, including diversity of research topics and geographic location, demographic diversity, and diversity of disciplinary backgrounds.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
