Interviews in Media
The Science of Sound, part 1, July 16, 2025
The Science of Sound, part 2, July 31, 2025
CMU Podcast, Where What if Becomes What's Next
News article on website of Cylab CMU Security and Privacy Institute, Sept 2024:
Distinguishing Real Sounds from Deepfakes
https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/news/2024/09/12-distinguishing-real-sounds-from-deepfakes.html
\
Interview by Science News Explores, April 2024:
Too much noise can harm far more than our ears.
Article by journalist Lindsey Konkel Neabore, April 2024 issue.
https://www.snexplores.org/article/noise-pollution-harms-brain-health
Interview by Pittsburgh Post Gazette, July 2020:
Interview by the Los Angeles Times, July 2020:
Outreach
Playtests of AnimalPOV: A climate challenge (2024).
Use a VR headset to embody an animal. Come to CMU or schedule a time at your school/center. RSVP required.
www.auditorylab.org/virtual-reality
Acoustics Today article by Laurie Heller on judging Acoustical Society Awards at
International Science and Engineering Fair. Fall 2022 issue.
Acoustics Today article by Laurie Heller on judging Acoustical Society Awards at
International Science and Engineering Fair. Fall 2021 issue.
When Sound Effects are Better Than the Real Thing
Lay Language Paper by Laurie Heller and Lauren Wolf
https://acoustics.org/pressroom/httpdocs/143rd/Heller.html
2022 Proceedings paper with technical details:
https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001581
Recent Invited Talks
Causal Perception of Environmental Sounds: Human Auditory Ecology Workshop. April 2025
Source Reassignment can Increase the Pleasantness of Sounds: Science of Art, Music, and Brain Activity. Jan 2024
The Causal Properties of Sounds Predict their Recognition and Misidentification: Acoustical Society of America. May 2023
Hearing Health and the Auditory Disorder of Misophonia: Pittsburgh VA Healthcare, Jan 2023
Recognition of Environmental Sounds: 3M Human Factors and Perception Technology Forum. May 2022
Recognition of Everyday Sounds: Colloquium at Language Technologies Institute, CMU, Jan 2022
The Perception and Acoustics of Everyday Sounds: Keynote talk at DCASE Workshop, Nov 2021
Organized Symposia and Competitions
Sound Scene Synthesis at the DCASE2024 Challenge
Co-organizer of Task 7, IEEE AASP Challenge on Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events (DCASE), March-July, 2023.
https://dcase.community/challenge2024/
Mathieu Lagrange, Junwon Lee, Modan Tailleur, Laurie M. Heller, Keunwoo Choi, Brian McFee, Keisuke Imoto, and Yuki Okamoto.
Sound scene synthesis at the dcase 2024 challenge. arXiv:2501.08587, 2025.
Junwon Lee, Modan Tailleur, Laurie M. Heller, Keunwoo Choi, Mathieu Lagrange, Brian McFee, Keisuke Imoto, and Yuki Okamoto.
Challenge on sound scene synthesis: evaluating text-to-audio generation. In Audio Imagination: NeurIPS 2024 Workshop AI-Driven Speech, Music, and Sound Generation. 2024.
Foley Sound Synthesis at the DCASE2023 Challenge
Keunwoo Choi*, Jaekwon Im*, Laurie M. Heller*, Brian McFee, Keisuke Imoto, Yuki Okamoto, Mathieu Lagrange, Shinnosuke Takamichi
Co-first-authored paper at DCASE Workshop 2023, Tempere, Finland, September 2023.
Co-organizer of Task 7, IEEE AASP Challenge on Detection and Classification of Acoustic Scenes and Events (DCASE), March-July, 2023.
https://dcase.community/challenge2023/
Synergy between Human and Machine approaches to sound/scene recognition and processing
Heller LM, Elizalde B, Raj B, Deshmuk S, Co-chairs of Special Session
IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), Rhodes, Greece, June 2023.
Environmental Sounds: Perception, Cognition, Applications
Heller LM, Shafiro V, Co-chairs of Special Session
Acoustical Society of America, Chicago, May 12, 2023.
Design Applications
This blog post describes how a former lab member's psychology research in the Auditory Lab at CMU
can be applied to her post-graduation human-centered design work in industry
It's All About You - by Nicole Navolio