Project DeStress is a research project beginning February 2018.

It is run by Dr Sarah Payne, an Environmental Psychologist and Assistant Professor of Health in the Built Environment, at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK (now Senior Lecturer in Environmental Psychology at the University of Surrey).

The project is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a Research Council UK.

There are four great project partners who will help contribute and shape the research process; they are Professor Marketta Kyttä from Aalto University,  Mr Jack Harvie-Clark the Director of Apex Acoustics, Mr Clive Bentley an Associate Consultant at Sharps Redmore, and Ms Lisa Lavia the Managing Director of The Noise Abatement Society. Their involvement connects academic research to industry and furthers public engagement with the research process and its outcomes. You can read more about each of them on our ‘People‘ page.

Shortly we will be recruiting for Post-Doctoral Assistants to join this exciting research project. They will be working on the technical aspects of acoustic simulation and the development of an interactive Visual Soundscape Simulator. Additionally, we will advertise the opportunity to join the team as a PhD student, with their tuition fees paid. We are also seeking organisations interested in this work who would be interested in helping supporting a PhD student and shape their research aim alongside this project.

You can follow the progress of Project DeStress via Twitter or Facebook, as well as on this website (updated, but originally was at destress.hw.ac.uk). We look forward to sharing news on this project once it is formally launched on the 1st February 2018, but feel free to get in touch and discuss the future goals of Project DeStress beforehand.