Earth is a Noisy Planet. Human activity means that from megacities to oceans, most places are infected with noise and tranquility is disappearing. This was starkly illustrated during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns when transport and industry largely stopped, and we glimpsed what a better-sounding future might be. Noise is a health problem for one in five European citizens. At high levels it causes hearing loss. At moderate levels it creates chronic stress, annoyance, sleep disturbance and heart disease. Noise makes it harder to communicate, harming learning in schools and increasing withdrawal of older people from social situations. The 2023 House of Lord's Science and Technology Committee report called noise a "neglected pollutant" and recommended more research to reduce harms. Noise also increases mortality in marine and terrestrial wildlife. The CDT will go beyond noise control to research how to engineer positive sounds. From using sound to improve the accessibility of products, through to enhancing cultural events that boost well-being, there are many ways of creating a better aural future. The CDT focuses on the user need of businesses, society and government to create a more Sustainable Sound Future. In EPSRC's Tomorrow's Engineering Research Challenges, the sound of drones and environmental noise are highlighted as needing innovative solutions. This CDT will not only cover this challenge, but will also contribute to seven out of eight Tomorrow's Engineering Research Challenges, because noise and vibration cuts across many sectors such as transport, energy, environment, construction and manufacturing. Through the CDT, we will address recruitment issues faced by the UK's £4.6 billion acoustics industry. Our partners tell us they struggle to find doctoral-level graduates in acoustics. Cohort training will empower our CDT graduates with an unprecedented depth and breadth of knowledge. This is needed because of the complexity of the challenge, from re-engineering machines, systems and buildings, through to understanding how sound affects the health and well-being of humans and other animals. Current PhD training in acoustics is too piecemeal to tackle a problem that cuts across sectors, regulators and society. The CDT will create a unique cohort of future research leaders and innovators, with the ability to create a step-change in how sound is tackled working across disciplines. This CDT brings together four powerhouses in acoustics: the Universities of Salford, Bristol, Sheffield and Southampton; along with industrial partners, regulatory bodies, public and third sector. This provides CDT students with access to an extraordinary range of laboratories and breadth of expertise for their training. This includes domain and application knowledge across many disciplines; state-of-the-art simulation, measurement and auralisation capabilities; datasets and case studies, and routes to impact. The CDT builds on EPSRC's UK Acoustics Network that has over 1,700 members including 500+ early career researchers. Challenging interdisciplinary research projects and cohort-based training will develop the much-needed postgraduates. A mixture of week-long residentials, group project and online activities are planned. These will develop technical skills for acoustics (simulation, measurement, machine learning, psychoacoustics, etc. and key skills for research (project planning, entrepreneurship, public engagement, policy influencing, responsible innovation, etc.). Partner placements will play an important role in ensuring the cohort learns about context and how to create impact. The learning outcomes of the training have been co-created between academics and partners, to ensure CDT graduates have the skills, knowledge and understanding to create a more sustainable sound future for all.

This network grant is focused on acoustics and pursues two main aims: (i) transfer new experimental techniques, models and scientific insights; (ii) promote mobility between universities, industry and other non-academic beneficiaries. In this respect, the UK has a critical mass and international reputation in acoustics which needs to be maintained and enhanced. Acoustics-related research in the UK is internationally leading and underpins key technological areas such as healthcare, manufacturing, defense, energy, digital communications and transport. However, the knowledge transfer and adoption of recent developments in physical acoustics, signal processing and numerical methods by industry and other end users (e.g. consultants and government bodies) needs improving. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, there is no existing single point of access network/central hub in the UK which brings the key academic and industry players together. Acoustics-related research in the UK's universities is fragmented, often applied to specific topics and length scales and suffers from inadvertent duplication. As a result, it is difficult for industry to engage with, or understand what is happening in, academia, how acoustics research relates more widely to industry needs and who in academia is the right person or which organisation to engage with in order to solve a particular industry need. Secondly, academia is clearly failing to demonstrate to the end users the value of their acoustics-related research in applications, thus failing to overcome the sector inertia for their research to have a stronger non-academic impact. Thirdly, there is no network/central hub for the coordination of the acoustics-related research through which a university can engage beyond their very specific, parochial partners, disseminate their work more widely and efficiently to the sector and generate a future road map of research which bears support from a majority of end users. We will establish a network for the wider coordination of acoustics-related research to enable better communication with industry and multiple avenues of research and innovation. It will support the EPSRC/UKRI Delivery Plan to promote the success of the UK's industry and academia through top quality research. This Acoustics Network aligns with the EPSRC expectation for a research network, which is "... expected to lead to new collaborative multidisciplinary research proposals and some may develop into virtual centres of excellence, providing critical mass of analytical expertise." The current RCUK/UKRI funding of acoustics-related research amounts to £94M which includes £62M support from the EPSRC. This funding covers research in general acoustics, audio engineering, ultrasonics and noise. Unlike other research disciplines, acoustics related research is not currently directly supported by an EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT). However, there are several CDTs which can directly benefit from acoustics related research. Therefore, there is a clear need for better coordination for the activities in acoustics to reduce fragmentation and overlap, and to use existing and future funding streams more efficiently. This is important to ensure that the quality of the critical mass of the acoustics-related research in the UK continues to stay internationally leading in the foreseeable future. Given the importance of acoustics and the value of the research funding in this area, the Acoustics Network will serve to promote this research discipline and to communicate the ongoing work beyond the acoustics research community and to the general public. In this respect, the network will be able to establish a website, software depository, hold workshops and conferences, produce newsletters, use publications by Learned Societies and Trade Associations and social media to communicate their work much more widely that is currently done.