Email: Chen.Xu@soton.ac.uk
Dr. Chen Xu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at the University of Southampton. His research focuses on psychoacoustics, computational audiology, and digital hearing diagnostics, with particular emphasis on developing smartphone-based methods for hearing assessment and loudness perception measurement.
My current research focuses on developing efficient computational methods for measuring loudness perception in listeners with hearing impairment. In particular, I investigate Bayesian machine-learning approaches, including Gaussian Process regression combined with active learning, to rapidly estimate loudness growth functions across sound levels and frequencies. By exploiting correlations in loudness perception across stimulus dimensions, these methods aim to substantially reduce the time required for clinical loudness measurements compared with conventional approaches such as ACALOS. The research also examines differences in loudness perception between simple laboratory stimuli and complex real-world sounds, with the long-term goal of enabling individualized loudness-based hearing-aid fitting strategies and improving hearing-aid comfort and usage.
Dr. Chen Xu is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR), University of Southampton, United Kingdom. He received his PhD in Hearing Sciences from the University of Oldenburg, Germany, where his research focused on psychoacoustics, mobile hearing assessment, and precision audiology.
His work centres on the development and validation of smartphone-based hearing diagnostics, including methods for pure-tone audiometry and categorical loudness scaling in remote environments. Dr. Chen’s research integrates psychophysics, statistical modelling, and machine learning to develop scalable hearing-healthcare solutions, particularly through virtual hearing-clinic technologies aimed at improving global access to hearing diagnostics.