Membership and aims
The Early Career SIG of the UK Acoustics Network Plus (SIG-EC) consists of over 600 members from industry, academia and the third sector in the early stage of their careers. We particularly encourage participation from final year PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and early career acousticians, engineers and lecturers. We work closely with the Institute of Acoustics Early Careers Group and the European Acoustics Association’s Young Acousticians Network.
The aims of the Early Career SIG are to bring our members together to gain and share knowledge and expertise, to facilitate pilot research, to foster communication across disciplines, and to strengthen links between industry and academia. We want to increase the participation of early career members in academia, industry, government, and consulting. We aim to use the knowledge and experience of academic and industry partners to facilitate the development of the next generation of acousticians. We, and our network as a whole, are committed to equality of treatment, to increasing diversity and participation in acoustics of under-represented groups, and to providing an inclusive and supportive environment for all network members.
Recent and upcoming events
On the 13th November 2024, we held the first of two virtual writing retreats. The second will be run on the 11th February 2025. More information is available here.
On the 20th March, we’ll be running an event in collaboration with the Physical Acoustics SIG on Careers in Acoustics. More information to come here.
On the 28th March, we’ll be involved in running the Art of Being an Acoustician in Manchester. More information to come.
If you have any ideas for other events or want to get involved, email us at earlycareersgroup@acoustics.ac.uk. Previous events are listed below.
UKAN+ Early Career Leadership
In UKAN+, which started on 1st April 2021, the Early Career section has its own executive board, and representation on the UK Acoustics Network Plus Executive Board. The chair of the Early Career Executive Board is Dr. Simone Graetzer (University of Salford). The other members of the board are Dr Volkan Acun (also University of Salford), who is the Early Career Acoustic Champion for Wellbeing, Dr Arshdeep Singh, the Early Career Acoustic Champion for AI (University of Surrey), Dr Helen Whitehead, the champion for Sustainability (University of Salford), Dr. Hasina Rahman (née Begum), the champion for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (University of Sheffield) and Dr Li-ke Jiang, the champion for Manufacturing and Transport (University of Leeds).
Previous UKAN committee/board members include Dr. Sam Jackson (Bristol/Dyson), Dr. Artur Gower (Sheffield), Dr. Nikhil Banda (Seiche), Dr. Stewart Haslinger (Imperial), Monika Kosecka (Scottish Association for Marine Science), Dr. Nikhil Mistry (Southampton), Cameron Salisbury (AECOM), Dr. Tobias Goehring (Cambridge), Dr. Antonio Torija Martinez (Salford), Dr. Lin Wang (Queen Mary University of London), Dr. Nikhil Banda (Drumgrange Ltd, now Leonardo), Dr Xudong Niu, the champion for Manufacturing and Transport (formerly University of Bristol), and Dr. Richard Colchester, the champion for Outreach and Public Engagement (formerly University College London).
Past UKAN events
We held our first, informal meeting in April at Acoustics 2018 in Cardiff.
In August, 2018, we held our first UK Acoustics Network Summer School (UKANSS18) at Gregynog Hall in Wales. The focus was on the development of key or “transferable” skills in communication, networking, collaboration, entrepreneurship and teamwork, career development advice and information about funding opportunities, and training in signal processing and practical applications of frequency analysis. We were able to secure presenters including Professors and Readers from the University of Sheffield, the University of Bristol, the University of Southampton, University College London, the University of Salford, and London South Bank University, and representatives from Thales, Dyson, Ultrahaptics, Brüel & Kjær, and the Engineering Panel of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
On the 7th of January, 2019, we held an informal social event at the UKAN first anniversary meeting in Sheffield.
On the 8th and 9th of April 2019, we held a two day event at Imperial College London on Building Effective Academic-Industrial Partnerships in Acoustics, incorporating the second meeting of the Vibro-acoustics Special Interest Group. Industry partners included DSTL, Audio Analytics, Dyson, Precision Acoustics, Hoare Lea, AECOM, John Cotton Group, Ultrahaptics, and KBR.
In August 2019, we held our second Summer School (UKANSS19) on Machine Learning for Acoustics at Gregynog Hall, Wales. Attendees had the opportunity to learn from experts in Python programming and in machine learning with Acoustics applications.
On the 9th and 10th of September 2019, we held two events at ICA 2019 in conjunction with the Young Members group of the IOA, the Young Acousticians Network of the EAA, Junge DEGA, and the YRAM network, amongst others. UKAN also collaborated with the ENRICH training network in running a workshop on building careers in industry and academia.
In October 2019, we had a very successful stand at New Scientist Live. Click here to see a video.
In November 2019, we met at the second anniversary event of the UK Acoustics Network.
In June 2020, we were involved in running a webinar on writing applications for research fellowships. More information is on this page.
In October 2020, we ran a special session on industry-academic collaboration at Acoustics 2020 in Chester. This session was run jointly by our group and the Institute of Acoustics Early Careers (formerly Young Members) group. Speakers included Andrew Mathieson from Thales and Joseph Allen from RBA Acoustics.
We ran a series of webinars from 1st September to early December 2020. For more information, click here.
In December 2020, we ran events at Forum Acusticum in Lyon, France, in conjunction with the European Acoustics Association’s Young Acousticians Network (EAA YAN). For details, click here.
On Monday 11th October 2021, we ran an event on Effective Collaboration between Academia and Industry at Acoustics 2021 jointly with the Institute of Acoustics Early Careers Group (formerly, Young Members Group). More information is available here.
In late 2021 to mid-2022, we ran the first series of Connecting SIGs events. Each was overseen by an Early Career Acoustic Champion and included talks on the research areas covered by the SIGs involved, and short talks from SIG members about their current research. If you are interested in learning more about future workshops, or have feedback about a workshop you attended, contact your Early Career SIG coordinator.
We organised several events at Internoise 2022 in August in Glasgow, including training and social opportunities. These were run in association with the Institute of Acoustics Early Careers Group.
On Friday 10th March 2023, we ran an event on Building a Career in Acoustics in central Manchester. Speakers included Trevor Cox, Jo Webb, Robin Langley and Stephen Turner. Click here for more information. The slides are available to view in the Resources section of this website. The videos are available on the UKAN+ YouTube channel.
On the 20th and 21st April 2023, we jointly organised the ‘Art of Being a Consultant/Art of Being an Acoustician’ event with the Institute of Acoustics, held at the Little Ship Club in London. Click here for more information.
We held an informal gathering at the UKAN+ Annual Conference on the 14th September. We started our 2023-2024 series of Connecting SIGs events on the 22nd September, with a session on the Future of Acoustics for Wellbeing and Health run as a satellite of Basic Auditory Science 2023. Our UKAN+ Summer School 2023 (UKANSS23), our third summer school, was held on the 26th to 28th September.
We ran the Art of Being an Acoustician with the IOA on the 22nd March 2024. For more information, click here.
Between September 2023 and April 2024, we ran two Connecting SIGs events on AI and on Wellbeing.
We organised a very successful social and networking event at Acoustics 2024 on the evening of the 11th September in collaboration with the IOA’s Early Careers Group. This was attended by many of our early career members and senior members of UKAN+ and/or the IOA. For more information, click here.
On the 13th November 2024, we held the first of two virtual writing retreats. More information is available here.
On the 14th and 15th November 2024, the Non-Destructive Testing and Bioacoustics SIGs Early Career Researcher event was held. We provided financial support for early career members to attend.
We were proud to subsidise student attendance at the Reproduced Sound conference 2024, which was held on the 12-14th November in Bristol.
Early Career Travel Grant Program
We have a dedicated travel grant program that allows our members who are not EPSRC-funded to claim reasonable domestic or international travel expenses. To find out more, click here.
Contact
For more information about this SIG and our events, or if you have ideas about a future event, please contact us at earlycareersgroup@acoustics.ac.uk.
You can find us on Twitter @EarlyCareerUKAN.
