In this episode, find out what the next generation of acousticians is researching! In this episode, we talk to the latest round of POMA Student Paper Competition winners, from the joint 189th meeting of the ASA and the Acoustical Society of Japan, held in Honolulu in December 2025. Their topics include:

- Perception of the PIN/PEN merger in speakers from the US South (Irene Smith, McGill University)

- Using distance to better inform models for multi-channel sources separation (Rajesh Rameshbabu, University of Illinois, Chicago)

- Designing resin reeds for oboes (Fumihiko Kurosawa, University of Tsukuba)

- Modelling cochlear synaptopathy, or "hidden hearing loss" (Kai Burian, Technical University Munich)

Associated papers:

Irene Smith and Meghan Clayards. "Merged perception of PIN and PEN: Interspeaker variation or partial merger in perception?" Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 60, 060013 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002242

Rajesh Rameshbabu; Rashen Fernando; Ryan Corey. "Learning distance-dependent spatial structure for multichannel source separation." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 60, 055004 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002298

Fumihiko Kurosawa; Naoto Wakatsuki; Tadashi Ebihara. "Control of characteristics through topological optimization of 3D-printed oboe reeds." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 60, 035003 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002307

Kai Burian, Ahsan J. Cheema, and Sunil Puria. "Modeling loudness contours to determine human auditory nerve fiber distribution and cochlear nerve degeneration." Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 60, 050006 (2025) https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0002265

Read more from Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics (POMA).

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