News¶
Project news¶
Autumn 2026 — An incoming postdoctoral researcher¶
SMILE is preparing to welcome a postdoctoral researcher to KTH. The new colleague will strengthen the project’s capacity in computational acoustics, acoustic metamaterials, physical evaluation, and human-centred soundscape research. The researcher will be introduced when the appointment details are public. Read the original KTH role description.
1 June 2026 — KTH–UCL workshop and visit¶
A University College London team visited KTH for a joint workshop on soundscape design and acoustic metamaterials. The afternoon at KTH’s Teknikringen campus combined a guided soundwalk with discussion of how metamaterials might contribute to soundscape quality in vehicle and urban settings. Xiang Fang and Tin Oberman led the introductory sessions, followed by a collaborative workshop and discussion. The visit created a shared starting point for future work across the two research environments.
2025–2026 — SMILE City: A Pre-study¶
SMILE City brings KTH and UCL researchers together to explore how soundscape thinking and acoustic metamaterials may inform responses to traffic noise in urban public space. The pre-study was selected for Stockholm Trio–UCL seed funding, supporting early exchange and longer-term collaboration. Read the UCL announcement or the Stockholm Trio announcement.
1 January 2026 — Project period begins¶
SMILE starts its four-year Swedish Research Council-funded programme at KTH.
3 November 2025 — KTH announces Swedish Research Council awards¶
KTH highlights SMILE: Ljudlandskapsutformning med Metamaterialinnovation och Lärande among the funded projects in Natural and Engineering Sciences. Read the announcement.
Around the field¶
Independent research selected for its relevance to SMILE. These items are not SMILE outputs, partnerships, or endorsements. The selection is reviewed every two weeks.
Last reviewed: 29 October 2026.
Influence of traffic speed and acoustic environment on perception and perceived workload in virtual reality¶
In a virtual urban park, 34 participants rated 30 km/h traffic as more pleasant and less eventful than 50 km/h traffic across three acoustic contexts. The context also affected both soundscape dimensions, while the measured difference in perceived workload was not significant.
The positive impact of naturally soundscaping a noisy urban space on same-night sleep in working adults¶
A controlled field experiment added natural sounds to a traffic-exposed rooftop break area. Working adults in the intervention group showed higher heart-rate variability after the visit and into early sleep that night, but the difference was no longer evident the next morning.
Absorbing exceptional point of coherent vortex beams¶
Experiments with acoustic vortex beams and symmetry-tailored metasurfaces realised chiral coherent-perfect-absorption exceptional points. Rotating the metasurface switched absorption capacity and degenerate states, while the vortex beams’ orbital-angular-momentum channels increased channel capacity and enabled sensitivity alongside robust perfect absorption.
Large language model-driven inverse design of acoustic valley-Hall insulators¶
A two-agent framework couples a fine-tuned designer model with a manager that handles task planning, simulation calls, and multimodal outputs. Given concise bandgap requirements, it generates candidate acoustic valley-Hall structures, verifies their numerical response, and produces band structures, eigenmode fields, and manufacturable model files.