Membership and aims
The Early Careers Group of the UK Acoustics Network (SIG-ECG) consists of over 200 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.
The aims of the group are to bring our members together to gain and share knowledge and expertise, to foster communication across disciplines, to strengthen links with industry and academia, and to facilitate collaboration. 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.
Committee
Our committee members comprise the coordinators, Dr. Katy Tant (University of Strathclyde), Dr. Nikhil Banda (Seiche), Cameron Salisbury (AECOM), Dr. Nikhil Mistry (Southampton), Monika Kosecka, and Dr. Stewart Haslinger (Imperial).
Upcoming events
In April 2020, we will be running events at Forum Acusticum in Lyon, France, in conjunction with the European Acoustics Association’s Young Acousticians Network (EAA YAN). These events will include an opportunity to meet prospective employers at ‘ECO’, an Early Career Opportunity Fair.
In May 2020, we will be running a special session on industry-academic collaboration at Acoustics 2020 in Chester. This session will be run jointly by our group and the Institute of Acoustics Early Careers (formerly Young Members) group. It will be 1.5 hours in duration and will consist of three streams: collaboration between academia and consultancy, academia and R&D, and career routes from academia into consultancy/R&D. If you, or your company, would be interested in participating in or speaking at this event, please contact us at earlycareersgroup@acoustics.ac.uk.
In August 2020, we will run our third summer school (UKANSS20) for third year PhD students, and early career researchers, engineers, consultants and lecturers working in Acoustics. This summer school will be on signal processing in Acoustics. It will be held at the same location as previous schools, in Tregynon in Wales. More information will be made available here soon.
In addition, we are planning several joint SIG events in 2020. [Details TBA]
Past 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.
Forum
SIG-ECG 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 the coordinators at earlycareersgroup@acoustics.ac.uk.
You can find us on Twitter @EarlyCareerUKAN.
