Professor Thushara Abhayapala

His research interests include the areas of spatial audio and acoustic signal processing, and multichannel signal processing. Among many contributions, he is one of the first researchers to use spherical harmonic based Eigen-decomposition in microphone arrays and to propose the concept of spherical microphone arrays, and was one of the first to show the fundamental limits of spatial sound field reproduction using arrays of loudspeakers and spherical harmonics. He also made outstanding contributions to the problem of multizone sound field reproduction.

Professor Abhayapala received the B.E. degree in engineering and the PhD. degree in telecommunication engineering from The Australian National University in 1994 and 1999 respectively.

He held a number of leadership positions, including the Deputy Dean with the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science from 2015 to 2019, the Director of the ANU Research School of Engineering from 2010 to 2014, and the Leader of the Wireless Signal Processing Program with the National ICT Australia, from 2005 to 2007.

Professor Abhayapala’s areas of expertise include: spatial audio, audio signal processing, array processing, broadband beamforming, acoustic signal processing, soundfield, wavefield, signal processing aspects of telecommunication systems, space time signal processing, room equalisation, spatial audio, signal processing, microphone arrays, loudspeaker arrays, room characterisation, speech enhancement, de-reverberation, spherical microphone array, spherical harmonics, multi-zone sound reproduction, higher order loudspeakers, virtual reality audio, active noise control, spatial noise control, head related transfer function, audio for metaverse, ar/vr systems, drone noise, and speech enhancement in high noise environments.