6 PhD Students for research on Easy Listening in occupational settings

Noise, hearing loss and listening difficulties at the workplace can require high levels of (listening) effort in order to maintain performance. This can lead to increased levels of stress and fatigue, which can result in productivity loss and increased sick leave. However, applying effort to listening leads to positive consequences as well (good work performance, pleasure, safety, societal participation).

In the Horizon Europe Doctoral Network project “EASYLI” (Easy Listening: optimizing the consequences of effortful listening in occupational settings), the objective is to optimize the ratio between the costs and benefits of effortful listening.

EASYLI will train 6 doctoral candidates to develop and apply a toolbox of ambulatory and laboratory measures to assess listening effort in occupational settings in normal hearing people and people with different degrees of hearing loss.
They will apply real-time acoustic scene analysis, virtual acoustics, and physiological and subjective measures in laboratory and real-life conditions.
The candidates will also evaluate individualized interventions (e.g. machine learningbased speech enhancement algorithms, hearing aids).

EASYLI consists of 5 academic partners and 4 non-academic partners representing hearing-aid and communication systems industries, audiology, and occupational sectors with challenging acoustic environments.