Post Doctoral Position Available at UCLA

The UCLA Voice Perception Laboratory (the Bureau of Glottal Affairs) has an opening for a post-doctoral fellow, beginning no sooner than January, 2012.  Initial appointment will be for one year, with renewal for a second year contingent on performance.  The ideal candidate will have a strong interest in the empirical study of voice quality and its relationship to voice production and acoustics, and will enjoy the process of experimentation.  Completion of the PhD degree prior to assuming the position is required.

The primary goal of the project supporting this position is to develop a psychoacoustic model of overall voice quality that can be linked theoretically and empirically to the physical changes in vocal fold vibration that cause perceived changes in quality.  This psychoacoustic model will specify a set of perceptually-important acoustic parameters that combine to replicate and thereby quantify the overall, integral quality of a voice.  We will assess the relationship between changes in the values of model parameters and changes in the perceived extent to which a voice deviates from normal quality.  This will provide an explanatory model specifying how acoustic parameters combine and interact perceptually to determine the location of any voice sample along a continuum from “better” to “worse.”  Finally, we will investigate the link between perceptually-important spectral changes and the associated alterations in glottal configuration, in order to identify targets for remediation that have the highest likelihood of producing vocal improvement during treatment. 

Although the primary focus of the position is voice perception, the voice group at UCLA is highly interdisciplinary, and includes experts in linguistics and cognitive science, speech-language pathology, otolaryngology, mechanical and electrical engineering, and physics.  In addition to perceptual research, facilities are available for high-speed imaging, physical and computational modeling, tissue engineering, in vivo and ex vivo modeling, and aeroacoustic studies, and collaborative interdisciplinary research is encouraged.  Fellows may reserve up to 25% of their time to develop their own projects in these other areas.

Interested candidates should contact Jody Kreiman by email at jkreiman@ucla.edu.