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Trevor Cox

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For the hockey player, seeTrevor Cox (ice hockey).

Trevor Cox
CitizenshipBritish
Alma materUniversity of Birmingham(BSc)
University of Salford(PhD)
Scientific career
FieldsAcoustics
InstitutionsUniversity of Salford
Websitetrevorcox.me

Trevor Coxis an English academic and science communicator. He was a Senior Media fellow forEPSRC,and is a past-President of theInstitute of Acoustics.

Academia

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Cox holds a degree in Physics and a PhD inAcoustics.He entered the field of acoustics because of an interest in music and his science background. He has been an academic inAcoustics Departmentat theUniversity of Salfordsince 1995 and currently holds the position of Professor of Acoustic Engineering.

Cox is fascinated by room acoustics, and how places can be designed for intelligible speech (for example, classrooms) and beautiful music (for example, auditoria). His acoustic designs can be found in rooms worldwide and he has co-authored a research book on absorbers and diffusers which is now in its third edition.[1]He was an associate editor for an international journal of acoustics (Acta Acustica united with Acustica).

He uses both qualitative methods (focus groups, interviews, sound-walks) and quantitative methods (perceptual testing in laboratories and over the Internet) to explore responses to sounds from products (such as washing machines), in outdoor spaces (such as cities) and various sound types (such as horrible sounds). He was director of ‘A Noisy Future?’, an ‘Ideas Factory’ research programme run by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. He was award theInstitute of Acoustics's Tyndall Medal in 2004.

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  • Sonic Wonderland(Bodley Head, UK 2014)
  • The Sound Book(W.W.Norton, US 2014)
  • Now You're Talking(UK: Bodley Head, US: Counterpoint press 2018)

Broadcasting

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Cox has presented a range of popular science documentaries forBBC Radio 4,BBC Radio 3andBBC World Service,including Sounds of Science, Aural Architecture, Life’s Soundtrack, Science vs Strad, The Pleasure of Noise, World Musical Instruments, Dragon's Lab, Biomimicry and Save our Sounds. He was co-originator and judge of BBC Radio 4’ ‘So You Want To Be A Scientist?’, a competition to find Britain’s best amateur scientist. He has appeared onInside Science.

He is host of theInventive Podcast,mixing Engineering Fact and Fiction.

Media coverage

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Since the 1990s, Cox has been communicating acoustic engineering to the public working on projects worth over £1 million. He was given theInstitute of Acousticsaward for promoting acoustics to the public in 2009. He was a finalist at Famelab, a ‘Pop Idol’-style competition to find science communicators for television. He has been involved in projects to produce teaching resources for pupils, the last having reached more than a quarter of a million pupils. He has developed and presented science shows seen by 17,000 pupils, including appearances in London at the Royal Albert Hall, the Purcell Rooms at the South Bank Centre and the Royal Institution. At one stage, he held theGuinness World Recordfor the world’s largest whoopee cushion, based on a stage prop used at the "Beautiful Music – Horrible Sounds" show.[2]He set the Guinness World Record for the 'Longest echo' in theInchindown oil tanks.

He has gained worldwide news coverage for stories such as "Does a duck quack echo?"[3][4]and "The Worst Sound in the World".[5]He has also investigated the World's scariest scream.[6]In addition, he has appeared in features onBBC1,Teachers TV,DiscoveryandNational Geographicchannels, and as an expert in news items on a variety of television and radio channels.

References

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  1. ^"Acoustic Absorbers and Diffusers: Theory, Design and Application, 3rd Edition".CRC press.Retrieved13 April2018.
  2. ^"The Ri makes the world's largest whoopee cushion!".The Royal Institution. 12 February 2009.Retrieved20 January2011.
  3. ^"Science 'quacks' urban duck myth".CNN. 8 September 2003.Retrieved20 January2011.
  4. ^"Sound Science is quackers".BBC. 8 September 2003.Retrieved20 January2011.
  5. ^"World's worst sound? Take baked beans, a bucket and Saturday night".The Guardian. 27 January 2007.Retrieved20 January2011.
  6. ^"Kid British and the science of screaming".The Guardian. 22 September 2009.Retrieved20 January2011.
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