Membership and aims

The Early Career SIG of the UK Acoustics Network Plus (SIG-EC) consists of over 300 members from industry and academia in the early stages of their careers. We particularly encourage participation from third-year PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and early career acousticians, engineers and lecturers.

In UKAN Plus, 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.

The aims of the group 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 with 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.

UKAN Committee

The UKAN committee members comprised the three coordinators, Dr. Simone Graetzer, Dr. Sam Jackson, and Dr. Artur Gower, and Dr. Nikhil Banda (Seiche), Dr. Stewart Haslinger (Imperial), Monika Kosecka, Dr. Nikhil Mistry (Southampton) and Cameron Salisbury (AECOM).

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.

Forum

SIG-EC members communicate via the Slack app. Our workspace address is earlycareerukan.slack.com. Step 1: Download the app. Step 2: Email us at the address below, specifying the email address you wish to use on Slack. Step 3: Accept our invitation to add you to our Early Careers Group channel. We have a social channel on Slack too!

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.