Research Ideas

["Kevin Baker, Dept Psychology and Computer Science" <pc1kb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear AUDITORY people,

We are a couple of researchers, currently working at Sheffield University
in the UK, whose contracts will soon be coming to an end. We both want to
stay in or near Sheffield if possible, which means we have to concoct some
research proposal of our own. We know that we can work well together, and
that we both have an interest in things auditory, but our research
backgrounds are very disparate, to say the least. While we have our own
thoughts on the subject, we would welcome any ideas on how the skills
listed below could be integrated to best advantage, and with maximal impact
on the challenges facing auditory research today.

        Please reply directly to us, and not to the whole of AUDITORY.

        	       	       	email: PC1KB@UK.AC.SHEFFIELD.SUNC

Thank you very much.
Cheers,
Kevin and Mike.


                          BACKGROUND  DETAILS

Kevin Baker has ...
----------------------
Experience in:
        - most sorts of psychological testing to do with sound and hearing
        - vestibular disorders (balance, menieres disease, tinitus etc)
        - statistical analysis
Knowledgeable interest in:
        - sign languages of the deaf
        - music perception
        - epistemology

He also has some musical ability, which is more often than not surpassed by
his enthusiasm. Currently he is employed as a psychoacoustic researcher on
a project aimed at producing a computational model of grouping principles
used in streaming. He has a habit of constantly incorporating ecological
theories of perception into most of the ideas he comes across. He has a BA
and MA in Psychology, and is a fair way into his PhD (on pitch and
streaming). Basically he likes to talk about ideas, theories and
explanations with as many different people as possible.

Mike Stannett is ...
------------------------
     ... thirty years old, with a deep interest in music  (a regular
performer for eight years of traditional English and some continental
European folk music), and extremely well-grounded in mathematics. He has a
good track record, with 18 research publications, mainly in pure
mathematics and the theory of concurrent semantics. He has a long-standing
interest in A.I. (one-time treasurer of Oxford Univ. AI society, and
subsequently founder of the Sheffield Univ. AI society) and some interest
in neural networks (especially their computational power, and their
application to forecasting time series). Currently working as an
econometrician, helping to develop a model of the UK economy suitable for
forecasting, and using standard statistical trechniques for testing the
appropriateness of models to the data available. Apart from having a BA and
a PhD in maths, he also has a postgrad degree in Business Studies (he's
been interested in strategy for absolutely ages), and enjoys extreme
intellectual challenges.