Funding
Funding Calls
Early career members who are not funded by the UKRI can apply for reimbursement of reasonable assembly travel expenses via the dedicated form. Please apply as soon as possible.
This call will support innovative, cross-disciplinary research addressing the harms caused by noise and building the capacity of the network to develop (1) mission-led proposals in a second funding call, and (2) larger collaborative bids for other forms of funding. We are seeking projects that test new and imaginative ideas, gather missing evidence and/or carry out feasibility studies laying the ground for larger collaborative bids. These could bring together academia, industry, government and third sector organisations to focus on noise related research relevant to the priorities, themes and challenges identified in the Tomorrow’s Engineering Research Challenges (TERC) report.
In this first call, we will fund up to six awards of 3 to 6 months in duration, with a maximum budget of £40k per successful project. Eligible costs are determined by UKRI criteria and may include Project Lead and Co-Lead time, travel and consumables and mobility funds. Regarding eligibility, each bidding team must include at least one member who is early in their career, and the lead must be from a UKRI eligible institution. We encourage applications from early career people and from a diverse range of disciplines and sectors
A word copy of the application form may be found here (docx). Please note there are minor changes to the form posted on 4th November.
Changes 2025-11-12: Added a section for Data Management Plans and removed the need to identify conflict with the Noise Network Team as this will be managed by the EB
Proposals should be submitted via the network project website (the form will be available shortly) The call deadline is the 12th December 2025 (Any application received after 11:59pm will be disregarded).
Details of the call and process may be found here (docx).
The template award letter may be found here (docx). We make this available so that the post award contract signing stage can be streamlined. The terms are non-negotiable.
If you have any questions, please contact us via our Noise Network mailbox: noise@surrey.ac.uk.
We may be using CMT to help us manage the review process for the funding calls, below is their required text for this service.
The Microsoft CMT service was used for managing the peer-reviewing process for this conference. This service was provided for free by Microsoft and they bore all expenses, including costs for Azure cloud services as well as for software development and support.
Funded Projects
What are safe noise exposures for hearing aid users?
Project Team
- Prof. Steven Bell, University of Southampton
- Rachel Van Besouw, Health and Safety Executive
- Richards Johns, ECR
Project Summary
With an aging population and longer working careers, an increasing number of people will use hearing aids in the workplace, including in hazardous noise environments such as shipyards or construction sites. Whilst regulations exist for noise exposure without hearing aids, we lack evidence for safe noise exposures for hearing aid users. The Health and Safety Executive have identified a need for guidance in this area. Hearing aids make sounds louder, which means that if a sound is near the limit of a safe noise exposure without hearing aids, it is likely to exceed a safe level when an aid is used. Currently there is no guidance on how hearing aids should be set up to prevent this happening, potentially causing additional hearing loss and increasing hearing related disability. Modern hearing aids are complex non-linear devices and there has not been recent research into how hearing aids amplify high level workplace sounds. We have two main aims. Firstly to understand the gain of hearing aid prescription methods for loud input levels and to relate those to acceptable noise exposure guidelines. Secondly to make measurements from existing NHS hearing aids in response to example industrial sounds in order to understand real world hearing aid outputs. Defining safe levels for hearing aid users aligns with the TERC priority ‘Improve whole-life health and wellbeing’ by enabling people with hearing loss to stay in employment for longer without risk to health. We plan to inform national guidance on safe listening levels for hearing aid users.
Hydro-locked acoustic resonators for improved noise attenuation in compact systems
Project Team
- Dr Roger Domingo-Roca (ECR), University of Strathclyde
- Prof. James Windmill
- Dr Gregory Chaplain
- Dr William Whitmer
Project Summary
The project will combine three cutting-edge concepts. First, sub-wavelength resonators capable of trapping and dissipating sound waves at sizes much smaller than their wavelength. Second, compliant hydro-locked hydrogels; soft, water-filled materials sealed to prevent evaporation, allowing resonator surfaces to flex, adapt, and absorb more energy than rigid structures. Third, nature-inspired architectures based on biological hearing systems that rely on compliant membranes and tuned cavities to sense and manage sound. Integrating these will enable a new class of efficient, lightweight acoustic systems suitable for future device integration. This work advances re-engineering the discipline of engineering by combining biology, materials science, and acoustics. It supports the understanding of complex systems by uniting soft material mechanics, resonant structures, and biomimetics. It contributes to responsible engineering by reducing noise-related harm to people and ecosystems. The potential impact is significant. Compact acoustic attenuation devices could be embedded into consumer electronics, wearable devices, micro-robots, and any application where space, weight, or power are limited. By providing more effective noise control, this technology supports human well-being, mental health, and environmental protection. Moreover, the use of bio-inspired, hydro-compliant structures may stimulate broader innovations in soft materials and adaptive systems. This pilot project lays the foundation for a disruptive new class of compact, bio-inspired acoustic devices tailored to today’s pressing noise-mitigation challenges.
AcouPore – Acoustic waves in hierarchical nanoporous materials
Project Team
- Dr Hasina Rahman, ECR, University of Warwick
- Prof. Kirill Horoshenkov, University of Sheffield
- Dr Wim Malfait-Empa
- Dr Paolo Bonfiglio-Materiacustica
Project Summary
This research directly addresses several of tomorrow’s most pressing Engineering challenges, particularly those related to net-zero goals, resilient infrastructure, sustainable materials, and intelligent monitoring technologies. Nanoporous materials play a critical role in energy-efficient buildings, clean energy storage, and environmental filtration – areas central to national and Global Engineering priorities. However, their behaviour can change unpredictably under real-world conditions such as heat, pressure, and gas exposure. Developing non-destructive, real-time methods to monitor these changes aligns strongly with future Engineering themes around smart materials, digital twins, and predictive maintenance, which aim to create safer, greener, and more efficient technologies. By using acoustics as a diagnostic tool, this research introduces innovative, low-energy, and scalable approaches to material monitoring. The idea of “listening” to a material offers a transformative step towards intelligent systems capable of detecting degradation before failure occurs, directly supporting future Engineering needs for adaptive infrastructures and sustainable manufacturing. Future work would lead to the development of a bespoke vertical impedance tube, combined with advanced modelling and machine learning, reflecting the shift towards integrated physical–digital engineering, enabling predictive insights into long-term material performance. The outcomes will contribute to next-generation nanoporous insulation materials that reduce heat loss in buildings and industrial settings, supporting energy security, carbon reduction, and environmental sustainability. In parallel, the project’s outreach connecting acoustics with art, storytelling, and community engagement helps address the societal challenge of broadening participation in engineering. By inspiring young people and underrepresented groups, this work strengthens the future Engineering workforce needed to tackle global challenges.
Ground Truth: Multimodal Sensing for Substrate Ecosystem Noise
Project Team
- Dr Lara Diaz-Garcia, ECR, University of Strathclyde
- Dr Andrew Reid, University of Strathclyde
Project Summary
When we think of noise, we usually imagine what we can hear. In reality, many animals communicate and sense their environment through vibrations travelling through the ground. Species as different as elephants, frogs, worms, and moles rely on these subtle signals to find mates, detect predators, and navigate their habitats. Human activities, like traffic, construction, and other forms of urban development, also generate ground vibrations, potentially disrupting these hidden communication channels. We currently do not know how extensive this interference is, because substrate-borne vibrations are rarely monitored. This project will develop a prototype sensor for recording ground vibrations and the tools needed to analyse them. This pilot will provide the first steps towards a larger programme examining the species-specific impacts of human noise and exploring the role of vibration-based communication in maintaining healthy ecosystems. The outcomes of this work will support researchers in biology and ecology by providing new methods and open access data. By improving our understanding of how human-generated noise affects the organisms that sustain soil health and biodiversity, the project may also inform future environmental policy. Ultimately, strengthening ecosystem resilience benefits the wider community, as healthy soils and diverse habitats are essential for both human well-being and the natural world.
Privacy-preserving urban noise monitoring
Academic Team
- Dr Lin Wang, ECR, Queen Mary University of London
- Dr Emmanouil Benetos, Queen Mary University of London
- Prof. Andrea Cavallaro, Queen Mary University of London
Project Partners
- CESVA Instruments
- Connected by Data
Project Summary
Urban noise is one of the most widespread environmental problems affecting people’s health and wellbeing. Traffic, construction, nightlife, and mechanical systems can cause stress, sleep disturbance and reduced quality of life. To reduce noise harms, cities need reliable information about where noise occurs and which sources are responsible. Although modern sensors can record sound and automatically identify noise sources, they are difficult to deploy in public spaces because they also capture people’s conversations. This raises significant privacy, ethical and legal concerns, meaning that most cities still rely on simple sound-level meters that cannot distinguish between different types of noise. As a result, important evidence needed for public health, planning and fair decision-making is missing. This project aims to make urban noise monitoring both effective and privacy-preserving. We will develop and test a new audio-transformation framework that protects people’s speech in audio recordings by making it unintelligible and impossible to identify, while keeping all other environmental sounds intact. This means the system can still tell whether a sound comes from traffic, construction or other sources, without revealing anything about what people are saying. Working with industry and civil-society partners, we will evaluate the technical performance, privacy safeguards and real-world feasibility of this approach. The project will provide the first evidence of whether large-scale, privacy-preserving noise monitoring is possible, enabling future research and supporting healthier, fairer and more responsive urban environments.
3D Sound Propagation Modelling in Complex Underwater Environments
Project Team
- Dr William Wu, ECR, University of Southampton
- Prof. Paul White, University of Southampton
- Dr Helen Currie, ECR, University of Portsmouth
- Dr Michael Wood, JASCO Applied Sciences
Project Summary
Noise is usually discussed in terms of what we hear in the air: traffic, aircraft, construction, and its effects on people. Underwater, however, sound travels further and faster, and many animals rely on it to communicate, find food, avoid predators and navigate. This means that underwater noise from human activities can disturb aquatic life over large areas, and it is increasingly recognised as a stressor for aquatic ecosystems. However, freshwaters remain understudied, even though many rivers and canals in major cities are crossed by bridges, tunnels, and heavy traffic, and often support intense vessel activity. Recent measurements in European rivers have shown that everyday transport activities can generate very high underwater sound pressure levels. In some cases, these exceed 170 dB re 1 µPa, dominated by low frequencies that many fish species are most sensitive to. Repeated exposure to such levels along a river could create acoustic barriers that make it harder for local and migratory species to move or use key habitats. Early results presented at an international conference on noise in aquatic life have highlighted these concerns, but traditional ocean acoustics propagation models may not capture key features such as strong boundary interactions and structure-sediment coupling in geometrically complex underwater environments. This project will explore the use of three-dimensional finite element modelling (FEM), a powerful engineering numerical simulation tool, to predict how underwater noise from transport sources spreads in shallow, geometrically complex environments such as rivers, lakes, estuaries and ports. By validating FEM predictions against field-collected underwater recordings, the project will test whether this approach can inform future noise maps for waterways and support better planning, impact assessment and protection of aquatic ecosystems.