Richard is a PhD candidate and occasional lecturer at McGill University’s School of Information Studies and is affiliated with the Multimodal Interaction Lab, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology, and the Sounds in the City cross-sector partnership. His main research interests are in helping professionals address real-world issues with new immersive technologies that help us plan for our senses, beyond just our eyes.
For example, noise pollution is a major problem in our cities, which is the cause of many negative health problems for residents. While city makers put lots of time into deciding what cities will look like, they don’t have access to appropriate tools to proactively plan how cities will sound. As a result, they react to noise pollution complaints and treat sound as a negative aspect to be contained and eliminated. Yet, not all sounds are bad! For example, many sounds can be relaxing, encourage social activities, and/or promote longer stays in commerce areas. Thus, our goal should be to help make cities sound better – not just less bad.
To do this, Richard is leading the research and development of a new interactive virtual reality tool to help city planners create more appropriate city soundscapes. This helps city makers integrate sounds with visuals, to help account for the needs of entire city spaces. Through careful research of examples such as these, Richard aims to help enhance both our professional and leisure experiences through connecting new technologies with real-world use cases.
Previously, Richard taught numerous computer sciences courses at Sheridan College. Prior to that, his research focused on speech perception and computational models of spoken word recognition that captures variation between speakers from a phonetician/psycholinguistic approach.
Recent Publication:
Yanaky, R., Tyler, D., & Guastavino, C. (2023). City Ditty: An Immersive Soundscape Sketchpad for Professionals of the Built Environment. Applied Sciences, 13(3), 1611. https://doi.org/10.3390/app13031611