Our Funders

£450k award by the William Demant Foundation to explore electro-haptic enhancement of music perception (2022-present). This project is a collaboration with Peter Vuust and Bjørn Petersen (Centre for Music in the Brain and Royal Academy of Music, Demark). The project will focus on haptic enhancement of music perception and how audio and haptic stimulation are combined in the brain

£568k funding award from the EPSRC for a new collaboration, with James Rankin and Farzaneh Darki at the University of Exeter, modelling the perception of haptics for hearing (2022-present). We will develop mathematical models of human perception of haptic stimuli used to enhance hearing.

£60k funding from the Del Monte Institute for Neuroscience (University of Rochester) to prime a new project exploring the neural correlates of haptic enhancement of hearing (2024-present). This project is a new collaboration with Ed Lalor (University of Rochester) and Matt Dye (Rochester Institute of Technology)

£7.5k award from the Signal Processing, Audio and Hearing Research Group at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research to explore new collaborations in hearing and haptics (2025-present). Thank you to Filippo Fazi for approving the use of these funds.

£500k grant to support Electro-Haptics Research (2019-2024). Researchers will be working on ways to improve CI listening using a new haptic device. The Electro-Haptics Research project was supported by joint grants awarded by the Oticon Foundation and the Danish Innovation Fund. The new multi-centre project is led by Dr Mark Fletcher, with a team from the University of Southampton, University of Cambridge, University of Iceland, University of Nottingham, Danish Technical University and Oticon Medical.

£155k grant awarded to support Ahmed Bin Afif, our new PhD student (2019-2024). Funding from King Saud University to support his research into improving CI hearing with haptic stimulation. EHS Lab welcomed Post-Graduate Researcher Ahmed Bin Afif​.

£82k grant to support our Virtual Acoustics project (2020-2023). The team for this project includes Professor Filippo Fazi who, leads the University of Southampton Virtual Acoustics and Audio Engineering Research Group, and Professor Nicci Campbell. The EHS Lab hired a post-doctoral researcher, Dr. Eric Hamdan, thanks to funding awarded by the Oticon Foundation.

£40k invested into the EHS lab by the University of Southampton Auditory Implant Service and Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (2019-2022). This funding was critical for us to build world-class laboratory facilities for this project.

EPSRC Doctoral Prize awarded to Sam Perry, allowing him to join EHS as a Research Fellow (2021-2022). Sam will be working on the EHS project for 1 year and 3 months on the doctoral prize. Additional funding has been provided by the University of Southampton Auditory Implant Service (extending Sam’s time by 3 months) and Oticon Medical (£5k for equipment and travel)

£20k funding from the Web Science Institute for a project titled: “A web-based software training tool to improve music enjoyment for cochlear implant users” (2023-2024). The project was led by Alan Sanderson with support from Mark Fletcher and Sam Perry.

£15k Funding from the University of Southampton Auditory Implant Service for Esma Akis to work as a research assistant on the EHS project for 6 months (2023-2026). Esma worked with us to evaluate new algorithms for converting audio to haptic stimulation.

£10k equipment fund to seed a collaboration between the University of Southampton and the University of Iowa awarded by the Iowa Neuroscience Institute (2020). Thank you to the Iowa Neuroscience Institute for supporting this project through their Barrier Buster Grant.
We are excited to collaborate with Dr Joel Berger and Dr Zsuzsanna Kocsis, using measurements from cortical electrodes in human subjects to explore the underlying mechanisms of haptic enhancement of listening.

£10k to fund an internship for 6 months on the electro-haptics project (2019). We welcome Jana Zgheib who is joining us for 6 months, thanks to £8k of funding from Oticon Medical and £2k of funding from the University of Southampton Auditory Implant Service. Jana will be looking at enhancement of spatial hearing using EHS.

£8k equipment support fund from Oticon Medical (2022). Thank you to Soren Riis from providing these funds

£6k app development fund from Audika (2022)
Thank you to Alexander Larsen for organizing this​

£6k award from the Signal Processing, Audio and Hearing Research Group at the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research to explore the use of haptics to aid people with balance disorders (2022). Thank you to Jordan Cheer and Stefan Bleeck for approving the use of these funds