Steven van de Par has been the new head of the Acoustics working group at the Institute of Physics at the University of Oldenburg since 1 April 2010. The research focus of his working group is the human perception of sound and the aural analysis of acoustic signals. The findings are used in areas such as ambient assisted living, audio quality evaluation and sound reproduction. The group can build on the successful research work of Volker Mellert.
Steven van de Par studied Applied Physics at Eindhoven University of Technology (NL). His Diplom thesis focussed on efficient, multi-channel audio coding for high-definition television. During his doctorate, the physicist investigated the binaural (two-ear) perception of acoustic signals at low and high frequencies. After completing his doctorate, van der Par worked on audiovisual perception as part of a post-doctoral programme. Following on from research results from his doctoral thesis, he turned his attention to the field of low-bitrate audio coding. In February 2000, he moved to the research centre of Philips Research in Eindhoven. As part of his work on low-bit-rate audio coding at Philips, Steven van de Par was co-responsible for the application for an important European project (Adaptive Rate-Distortion Optimised sound codeR (ARDOR)). He was also involved in a project on parametric stereo coding that led to MPEG standardisation. The scientific publication of this work together with the authors Jeroen Breebaart, Armin Kohlrausch, and Erik Schuijers was honoured with the Best Paper Award from the Journal on Applied Signal Processing at the end of August 2010. Since 2005 he has focussed on topics in the field of music information retrieval, computational auditory scene analysis and natural sound reproduction with headphones and loudspeakers.