Tag: Pasquale Bottalico

From the lab to the concert hall, virtual reality plays a growing role in acoustics studies

May 05, 2026 | Ethan Simmons

Virtual reality helps “bridge the gap” between lab environments and the real world

To simulate classrooms, performance halls and other indoor environments, the Speech Accommodation to Acoustics Lab uses virtual reality and “auralization” techniques in controlled settings. (Photo provided)

At the Speech Accommodation to Acoustics Lab, researchers are trying to solve a common problem for teachers and vocal performers. How can they be heard and understood without straining their voices? 

Pasquale Bottalico, associate professor of speech and hearing science, runs the Speech Accommodation to Acoustics Lab, which investigates the acoustical conditions of rooms—classes, restaurants and concert halls alike—that lend themselves to intelligible speech with minimal vocal effort from the speakers. 

Over the last 5 years, the lab’s research has steered toward virtual reality and auralization, a technique to replicate the sound conditions of different spaces, to simulate these indoor conditions and make their studies more applicable to real-life scenarios. Here, Bottalico expands on his SpAA Lab’s recent projects and VR experiments.

When did your lab begin using virtual reality? What compelled you about this type of technology for your area of research?

Our lab began working with virtual reality (VR) in 2020 as part of our broader research on how acoustic environments influence voice production and communication. In many traditional speech and voice studies, experiments are conducted in quiet laboratory settings that do not fully represent the complex environments people encounter in everyday life.

VR provides a powerful way to bridge that gap. It allows us to recreate realistic environments—such as classrooms, concert halls, or social settings—while still maintaining precise experimental control. For example, VR makes it possible to manipulate room acoustics, background noise and visual cues independently and observe how speakers adapt their voice. Research has shown that both auditory and visual environmental information can influence voice production and perception, highlighting the importance of studying communication in multisensory contexts rather than purely auditory ones.  

For virtual reality studies you’ve worked on, could you describe what these experiences look, feel, and sound like for participants?

Participants wear a virtual reality headset and headphones that immerse them in a simulated environment. For example, someone might find themselves standing in a classroom, a concert hall or a restaurant while speaking or singing. The visual environment allows them to look around the space, while spatialized audio reproduces how their voice would sound in that particular room.

This means participants hear realistic acoustic effects such as reverberation, reflections and background noise. Studies using these methods have shown that speakers and singers naturally adjust their vocal production depending on the acoustic properties of the environment, even when those environments are simulated.  

What equipment or tools do you use to simulate these experiences?

To create these simulations, we combine several technologies. 

Participants typically use a VR headset for the visual environment and high-quality headphones to deliver spatial audio that reproduces realistic room acoustics.

Behind the scenes, we use auralization techniques, which allow us to simulate how sound propagates in real spaces such as classrooms, concert halls or lecture halls. We use real measurements to simulate the acoustics of the environments, like a University of Illinois classroom, or venues at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. 

Microphones and acoustic analysis tools are also used to measure vocal parameters such as sound pressure level, pitch, and vocal effort while participants interact with the virtual environment.

Because virtual reality can replicate the sensory conditions of real communication environments, it may help improve the transfer of therapeutic strategies from the clinic to everyday life.

Pasquale Bottalico

Associate Professor Speech and Hearing Science

Tell us more about VR as a training or therapy tool. How might virtual reality benefit professional voice users and individuals with voice disorders?

VR has enormous potential as a training and therapy tool, especially for professional voice users such as teachers, singers and public speakers. These individuals often need to communicate in demanding environments for long periods of time, which can lead to vocal fatigue or voice disorders.

One challenge in voice therapy is that exercises performed in a quiet clinic may not transfer easily to real-life environments. VR can help address this problem by allowing people to practice communication in realistic scenarios—such as teaching in a noisy classroom or speaking in a crowded social setting—while still being in a safe and controlled therapeutic environment.

Because VR can replicate the sensory conditions of real communication environments, it may help improve the transfer of therapeutic strategies from the clinic to everyday life.

What are some examples of virtual reality studies you’ve performed? What did you learn?

Our lab has been exploring VR applications for voice and speech research through several projects and doctoral dissertations.

For example, the doctoral work of Charles Nudelman, Ph.D., supported by the Raymond H. Stetson Scholarship, examined how visual aspects of an environment—such as room size and occupancy—affect voice production using immersive virtual reality. His research demonstrated that visual characteristics of a room can influence acoustic voice parameters and self-perceived vocal fatigue and discomfort, highlighting the importance of visual cues in voice production.  

Similarly, the doctoral research of Ümit Daşdöğen (now at CSD University of Delaware), funded through an NIH R21 grant, investigated how auditory, visual and audiovisual sensory inputs influence voice perception and production in immersive VR environments. This work showed that multisensory factors can significantly affect vocal loudness, vocal effort, and acoustic voice parameters, helping establish a scientific foundation for the use of VR in voice training and therapy.  

Another related project is the doctoral research of Carly Wingfield at the Illinois School of Music in collaboration with Professor Yvonne Gonzales Redman, which was supported by the prestigious Kate Neal Kinley Fellowship. Her work explored the use of VR simulations to help singers rehearse in virtual replicas of performance venues. The results suggested that practicing in VR environments allowed singers to better adapt to the acoustics of the real performance space and feel more confident when performing in unfamiliar venues.  

We also currently have a new project underway in the lab focusing on virtual reality–based voice therapy and communication training. This study involves Giulia Fusari, a visiting scholar from the Politecnico di Milano, and Mariah Bates, a master’s student in Health Technology at the University of Illinois completing her capstone project with our lab.

The project is developing a human-centered VR platform designed to simulate realistic conversational environments, such as social interactions in restaurants or other everyday communication settings. Participants complete weekly sessions over several weeks, and we evaluate usability, communication effort, realism of the environment and overall user experience. The goal is to better understand how immersive environments can support communication training and voice therapy in ecologically valid contexts.

In future developments, these types of VR environments could also be adapted to support individuals with neurological conditions that affect speech and voice, such as Parkinson’s disease, where patients often struggle to generalize speech therapy skills from the clinic to real-world communication settings.

If there are studies open to participants, how can they reach out?

Individuals interested in participating in research studies in our lab can contact us directly at pb81@illinois.edu. We regularly recruit participants for studies involving speech perception, voice production and immersive communication environments.

Editor’s note:

To learn more about the Speech Accommodation to Acoustics Lab, visit their website.


 

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SHS Fall 2023 Promotions and Tenure

Oct. 23, 2023 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Three faculty members from the Department of Speech and Hearing Science earned promotions and tenure prior to the fall 2023 semester. SHS congratulates Raksha Mudar, Brian Monson and Pasquale Bottalico for their well-earned promotions.

Raksha Mudar

Raksha Mudar, who joined the faculty of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in 2011, was promoted to full professor in 2023. Mudar, who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Dallas, is the director of the Aging and Neurocognition Lab. 

Mudar investigates the effects of normal cognitive aging and brain diseases including mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer’s disease and frontotemporal dementia on higher order semantic functions. She uses a combination of behavioral methods, event-related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging in her research.

“I am deeply honored to be promoted to full professor at such an esteemed institution of higher education and research,” Mudar said. “My path to full has been very rewarding. I chose academia because both research and teaching bring so much joy to me. Looking back, I know I chose right, and am excited for what lies ahead.”

Mudar was elected as a fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association at the ASHA Convention 2022—one of the highest forms of recognition given by ASHA. Mudar has been involved in several federally funded grants and is currently the primary investigator on an R01 titled “Digital Technology to Support Adherence to Hypertension Medications for Older Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment.”

Brian Monson

Brian Monson, who joined the faculty of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in 2017, was promoted to associate professor in 2023. Monson, who received his Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, is the director of the Auditory Neuro Experience Lab. His field of research is in auditory neuroscience. 

Monson holds degrees in electrical engineering, acoustics and speech/language/hearing science, with further specialization in neuroscience and music. With this background, he takes an interdisciplinary approach to auditory research, interfacing with clinicians, scientists, engineers and musicians. His research interests center around auditory neurodevelopment and speech/voice perception.

Monson is the principal investigator on an R01 grant from NIH-NIDCD for his project titled, “The ecological significance of extended high-frequency hearing in humans,” and the PI on an R21 from the NIH-NIDCD as well as the co-PI on another R21.

“I’m quite honored to become a tenured faculty member at such a reputable institution as the University of Illinois,” Monson said. “I very much look forward to continuing to serve our students and our community with my colleagues in Speech and Hearing Science and in Applied Health Sciences.”

Pasquale Bottalico

Pasquale Bottalico, who joined the faculty of the Department of Speech and Hearing Science in 2017, was promoted to associate professor in 2023. Bottalico earned his bachelor’s degree in telecommunications engineering from Univeristà Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria (Italy), while simultaneously pursuing a degree in opera singing at the F. Cilea Music Academy of Reggio Calabria (Italy). 

In 2005, he moved to Turin where he earned his master’s degree in telecommunications engineering from Politecnico di Torino (Italy). Bottalico earned his Ph.D. in metrology, studying acoustics with particular attention to the uncertainty of measurements and statistical analysis of data. Bottalico is particularly interested in the professional voice user and singer techniques, as well as the definition and the quantification of vocal load. Other fields he is interested in are speech intelligibility, room acoustics and musical acoustics.

Bottalico is also a professional chorister, having performed under such prestigious directors as Rafael Frühbeck De Burgos, Yuri Ahronovitch, Jeffrey Tate, Juanio Mena, Gianandrea Noseda, Ottavio Dantone, Wayne Marshall, Helmuth Rilling, Christopher Hogwood, Robert King and Ivor Bolton.

“Attaining tenure and rising to the role of associate professor is a profound validation of my dedication to enlightening minds, pushing the boundaries of knowledge and contributing to the ever-evolving academic landscape,” Bottalico said. “It signifies not just personal achievement but the faith others place in my ability to continually inspire students and illuminate the paths of intellectual exploration.”

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Student Spotlight: Charlie Nudelman, a trained ear

May 10, 2023 | Ethan Simmons

Nudelman was raised by a speech language pathologist: His mother

Charles Nudelman, right, with adviser Pasquale Bottalico

What comes to mind when you hear “professional voice-user?” Perhaps the image of an opera singer or a sports announcer pops in your head.

Ask Department of Speech and Hearing Science doctoral candidate Charles Nudelman, and he’ll conjure dozens of examples: Canvassers, radio DJs, telemarketers, clergy and lawyers are just a few of the professions who’ve come to him with vocal problems.

“The voice is something I feel like we take for granted—we wake up in the morning and expect everything to go fine,” Nudelman said. “If you’re relying on your voice for your job, hoarseness is going to get worse as you use it. And there’s a lot of costs related to that.”

After spending a year diagnosing voice issues in a clinical setting, 2019 SHS graduate Nudelman has returned to his alma mater to obtain his doctorate, focusing his research on preventing vocal disorders for the near-30 percent of adults who face them.

Nudelman, from Gurnee, Ill., was raised by a speech language pathologist: His mother. But he came to the University of Illinois with his major undeclared, initially hoping to veer from the course she traveled.

“I wanted to carve out my own path, but I ended up loving the classes and loving the faculty of (SHS),” Nudelman said. “That’s what drew me here to the U. of I., knowing regardless of the path I took I would have a really good education. And it was true.”

Under his advisor and friend SHS Associate Professor Pasquale Bottalico, Nudelman has become a decorated student researcher within the department, receiving the Phyllis Ariens Burkhead Memorial Fellowship and the Elaine Paden Award this spring.

And for his presentation at 2023’s “Research Live!,” where graduate students describe their own studies to a judge panel of high school juniors, he came away with the grand prize of $500.

From the start of his undergraduate experience, Nudelman was using his communication skills often, joining student radio and broadcasting Illinois athletics events through Big Ten Network’s Student U.

“It brought me to figure out what exactly is the voice, how does it work, what is this instrument we all have? And how can I make it better while I’m on TV? That’s a wormhole to itself, and I’m still living in it.”

Those questions brought him to SHS 301: General Speech Science, taught by then-first-year Assistant Professor Bottalico. Nudelman sat in the front row every lecture, taking copious notes. He quickly attached to Bottalico’s “distinct” teaching style, and gratefully accepted an invite to his lab.

For the better part of six years, the pair have worked “nonstop” on projects together, even when Nudelman left to obtain his master’s degree from the MGH Institute for Health Professions in Boston. Now back at the Illinois, he’s set to obtain his Ph.D. in 2025.

“The stars aligned, he’s an amazing mentor and friend and person,” Nudelman said. “He’s not only looking to open doors for me but any person who works with him.”

What’s “astonished” Bottalico about his mentee is how Nudelman has responded to escalating expectations with every new research project. Just one year into his Ph.D. program, Nudelman’s research output is already comparable to that of an advanced scholar, Bottalico said.

“I have a very high standard, it’s not easy to surprise me.” Bottalico said. “And Charlie has done it constantly since we met.”

Nudelman’s winning study for Research Live! took a close look at the vocal performance of teachers. He used a virtual reality headset to simulate various classroom environments for 30 schoolteachers, closely monitoring the acoustics of their voices.

What it showed: Teachers who spoke to virtual classrooms fuller with simulated students reported more vocal discomfort and fatigue, Nudelman said, while larger virtual classrooms negatively affected the teachers’ voice quality.

“I think it’s something to think about within classrooms when class sizes are only increasing and we want our teachers to be comfortable,” Nudelman said. “I guess I’m a proponent for smaller class sizes based on this study.”

He has his sights set on a career in academia, “hopefully being a mentor like Dr. Bottalico has been to me to as many students as I can,” he said. But the doctoral student finds fulfillment in making research accessible to the general public as well.

For example: Instead of clearing your throat before speaking, sip on some water. Avoid whispering — it’s worse for your voice than just talking. And if you’re speaking to a large group, use a microphone and take pauses to breathe to avoid hoarseness afterward.

It’s this brand of practical science that made Nudelman feel right at home at AHS.

“It doesn’t matter what AHS major you are, you’re working with people to improve their quality of life,” he said. “Even though we’re all doing different things, the goal is the same, and you can feel that whenever you’re interacting with anyone in this college.

“It’s a great place to come if you’re interested in helping people.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Ethan Simmons, email ecsimmon@illinois.edu.
 

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SHS World Voice Day shows importance of interaction between voice and acoustic environment

April 25, 2022 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

This study demonstrates that singers also tend to adjust their vocal production when in different spaces

Faculty from the Dept. of Speech and Hearing Science were involved in the planning and execution of World Voice Day, a symposium designed to build awareness of the human voice.

Researchers from SHS—including assistant professors Keiko Ishikawa, Brian Monson and Pasquale Bottalico—as well as invited speakers discussed their interdisciplinary projects illuminating voice usage and health.

At the end of the two-hour-plus event, the consensus to achieve voice clarity was: The room matters.

One of the presentations was a collaboration of Bottalico, School of Music Associate Professor Yvonne Gonzales Redman and undergraduate student Natalia Łastowiecka, who worked on a study investigating the influence of room acoustics on singers’ voice production. Clarke University Assistant Professor of Music-Voice Joshua Glasner was also part of the presentation.

The researchers said that similar research on instrumentalists suggests that musical performers may be influenced to some extent by the acoustic environment, and this study demonstrates that singers also tend to adjust their vocal production when in different spaces. Bottalico said singers were recorded singing the same musical selection—Giuseppe Giordani’s “Caro mio ben”—consecutively in five different locations on campus: Smith Memorial Room, Smith Recital Hall, KCPA Great Hall, Colwell Playhouse and the Amphitheater. Voice parameters analyzed were vibrato rate, extent, and pitch inaccuracy. Vibrato extent showed significant changes to the different acoustic environments.

The researchers said to combat any voice problems, singers should train in a variety of spaces, and that future studies should investigate functional causes of aberrant vibrato rate, and investigate how to train singers to adapt to different acoustic environments.

Dr. Ishikawa presented with Diana Orbelo of the Mayo Clinic on the “Vocal health among singers.” Orbelo talked about the importance of gargling, calling it the “rock-star quick fix.” Orbelo said gargling—she recommended water, not beer, as some rock stars preferred—can quickly relax the voice. Ishikawa talked about The Lombard Effect, which is the involuntary tendency of speakers to increase their vocal effort when speaking in loud noise to enhance the audibility of their voice.

Ishikawa said that noisy environments are difficult for anyone to speak intelligibly but they are more difficult for people with voice disorders. Most of these people undergo voice therapy as a part of their treatment, where they learn to use vocal production techniques.

“We wanted to know which technique most effectively improves intelligibility in noise and found twang was the best one, compared to operatic resonant voice and “clear speech,” she said.

“Because noise changes the way people talk—which is the Lombard effect—we thought it would make it difficult for people to use learned therapy techniques. Our recent study showed otherwise, however. People did better with using a technique called “clear speech” when they were hearing the noise. This finding was unexpected and needs further exploration,” Ishikawa said.

Orbelo added that certain sounds, such as twang, as Ishikawa mentioned or talking like a gangster—think Edward G. Robinson In “The Last Gangster”—can help cut through noisy environments.

Monson’s presentation was on the “Directivity of singing voice.” Monson talked about singers’ need to get accommodated to acoustic spaces because they “rely on auditory feedback to regulate vocal output.”

But directivity of a voice matters as much as reflective surfaces because sounds “don’t necessarily go in all directions.”

Other presenters included Dario D’Orazio from the Universita’ di Bologna, Italy, on the “Auralization of soprano;” lan Howell of the New England Conservatory of Music, who presented on “Spectrographic and perceptual analysis of the singing voice,” and Mary Pietrowicz, a Senior Research Scientist at the Illinois Applied Research Institute, presented on “Application of machine learning for voice quality detection among actors.”

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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A Few Minutes With … Pasquale Bottalico

Dec. 17, 2018 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

Pasquale Bottalico’s research looks at noisy environments, such as restaurants. (Google Images)

In this edition of “Five Minutes With …,” AHS media relations specialist Vince Lara-Cinisomo interviews Dr. Pasquale Bottalico in the department of Speech and Hearing Science about his study of the effects of ambient noise in restaurants.

Bottalico, in his study, “Lombard effect, ambient noise and willingness to spend time and money in a restaurant,” published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, found that subjects reported a disturbance of their speech when noise reached 52.2 A-weighted decibels (dBA) and that vocal effort began to increase at 57.3 dBA. The sound level of speech increased as ambient noise increased. As background noise increased, it triggered a decrease in the willingness to spend time and money in that establishment. You can read more about Dr. Bottalico’s research here.

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Transcript

VINCE LARA-CINISOMO: Hello, this is Vince Lara, Media Relations Specialist at the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois. Today I spend five minutes with Dr. Pasquale Bottalico, of the Department of Speech And Hearing Science, to talk about his recent study on ambient noise in restaurants and its effect on the bottom line.

PASQUALE BOTTALICO: So the goal of the restaurant, the idea of the restaurant, is what we can do to improve the situation in restaurant. So my study was actually started because there was a lack in the literature. And I’m always being interested, it’s not the first paper that I worked about Lombard effect. I’m very interested in Lombard effect.

And I started to be interested in Lombard effect, again, starting from classroom acoustics, because the Lombard effect is basically characterized by a rate of voice increase per dB increasing noise in the environment. And the value is 72 for teachers, which is the highest. Generally, in the literature, it’s reported between 0.3 and 0.6. But teacher, 0.72., so they’re increasing their voice even higher.

VINCE LARA-CINISOMO: Every day?

PASQUALE BOTTALICO: Every day, for every dB of noise increasing in the classroom. So this means that restaurant noise– everyone went to a restaurant in his life, and it can happen that after dinner with some people, at a restaurant, you go out and your throat’s sore. And you don’t really understand why. And because the Lombard effect is an unconscious effect, so you are not conscious of the fact that you are actually screaming.

But your voice, your body, and your physiology knows that. And so you will have the effect that your throat is burning. And I found particular the fact that this effect was never studied in a restaurant. And there were not studies correlating it with the willingness to spend money. So I thought it was a good idea to do the study. And I already did similar study for understanding other aspects of the Lombard effect. I was quizzing in the past about at which level of noise it starts, these effects, in other papers.

So I use a similar protocol, but I changed the setting, and it changed the noise. So I tried to recreate a restaurant in one of our sound booths. I had my students, my undergraduate students, that were the partner in the dinner. And we used typical restaurant noise, and we changed the level in a random way, covering a very large interval of noise, so from a medium level to a very loud level. Again, using the range of noise level reported by the literature, in restaurant noise.

And what it came out, that a level between 50 and 55 dB is starting this willingness to leave that place, and also to spend less money to eat in that place, and is starting the disturbance in the communication. And because of that, there is the objective evaluation of the voice, that is starting to increase at about 60 dB of noise. And all of these effects were quite strong.

We are starting to work again on the project. After the forum actually, because I kind of figured out that in this case, we used college students for this study, and I’m considering it like a pilot. But I want to move forward with the elder population.

And so, we know also that we have child in our college that’s interested in new research on aging people. And we have a movement, that is the age friendly in Urbana-Champaign, to make the city more friendly for aging people. And I think that this project will fit perfectly.

So I have a doctoral student in audiology. She’s going to start to collect data next semester. And the goal will be to create a different group in the elder population, normal hearing, and people with a moderate hearing loss, and people with a severe hearing loss. And try to understand better how these vulnerable populations are affected by the problem.

VINCE LARA-CINISOMO: My thanks again to Dr. Bottalico. This has been Five Minutes With.

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A Quiet Place

July 26, 2019 | Vince Lara-Cinisomo

The Lombard effect describes the unconscious attempt speakers make in noisy environments to maintain a level of speech that allows them to be understood

Baseball Hall of Fame member Yogi Berra once famously said, “It’s so crowded, nobody goes there anymore.” For restaurants, it’s not the crowd but the noise that drives people away.

That’s what Dr. Pasquale Bottalico is trying to mitigate with his research.

Dr. Bottalico, an assistant professor in the department of Speech and Hearing Science in the College of Applied Health Sciences, had his study, “Lombard effect, ambient noise and willingness to spend time and money in a restaurant,” published in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America in September 2018.

The Lombard effect describes the unconscious attempt speakers make in noisy environments to maintain a level of speech that allows them to be understood. The objective of Dr. Bottalico’s study was to determine the minimum level of noise in a restaurant that initiates the Lombard effect.

Restaurant noise is a common complaint for diners, with some 25 percent saying they consider noise to be the most irritating component of eating out, according to a Zagat survey cited in the study. Using his undergraduate students, Dr. Bottalico simulated a restaurant setting in one of the SHS sound booths.

“We used typical restaurant noise and we changed the level in a random way … from a medium level to a very loud level,” he said.

What Dr. Bottalico found was that subjects reported a disturbance of their speech when noise reached 52.2 A-weighted decibels (dBA) and that vocal effort began to increase at 57.3 dBA. The sound level of speech increased as ambient noise increased. As background noise increased, it triggered a decrease in the willingness to spend time and money in that establishment.
 
“After dinner, your throat is sore and you don’t understand why,” he said. “But the Lombard effect is an unconscious effect, so you are not conscious of the fact that you are actually screaming.

“But your voice, your body and your physiology knows that. And I found that this particular effect was never studied in a restaurant and they were not studying it, correlating with the willingness to spend money.”

The Turin, Italy-born professor had done similar studies in the past understanding other aspects of the Lombard effect, including in classrooms, where the object was to construct the perfect learning environment in terms of how sound reverberates from the instructor speaking to the students.

What Dr. Bottalico found was that many classrooms in Europe had much slower reverberation times than in the United States, which led to sounds overlapping and much less clarity of what was being said, thus hampering comprehension by students.

Armed with that data, he was particularly interested in how it translated in other settings, especially after seeing how it dovetailed with restaurants and a declining bottom line.

“I used a similar protocol, but I changed the setting and I changed the noise,” he said.

Dr. Bottalico concluded that restaurants should have ambient noise levels of 50 to 55 dBA – a level much lower than current restaurants.

He said when restaurants eclipse that figure, “it was starting to [indicate] a willingness to leave that place and also to spend less money to eat in that place. It was starting to create a disturbance in the communication.”

A passion for music and voice  

That disturbance is something Dr. Bottalico assiduously attempts to avoid. A trained opera singer who studied music and engineering at two different universities in Italy at the same time, he was in tune at an early age.

“I come from a family that very much loves music,” he said. “But my parents come from a very blue-collar family so they didn’t have the opportunity or the time to study music when they were kids. I remember in my house there was always music playing and my father in particular was very attracted to classical music and opera. So I grew up learning about opera without knowing I was doing that.”

Dr. Bottalico earned his PhD in Metrology, studying acoustics with particular attention to the uncertainty of measurements and statistical analysis of data. For his dissertation, he investigated classroom acoustics.

The transition from music to his current vocation was seamless, Dr. Bottalico said, because when you’re a vocal performer “you need to understand the internal mechanisms you are using. When you are a voice student, it is an obsession because it is not like other instruments, when you can see what you are doing. If you are a piano player, and you have a hard passage, you will keep practicing that passage until your fingers are moving automatically and you are able to do that particular passage.”

He is particularly interested in the professional voice user and singer techniques, as well as the definition and the quantification of vocal load.

Vocal performers, he said, “cannot study too much because you are your vocal instrument so you need to be very careful.”

Because of that, he is sensitive to what straining to be heard — whether it’s in a restaurant or other setting — can do to a voice.

Taking next steps and finding solutions

Dr. Bottalico is treating this published study as a pilot and hopes to expand it to focus on an elderly population, especially since Champaign-Urbana is positioning itself as aging-friendly.

“I have a doctoral student in audiology and she’s going to start to collect data next semester,” he said, “and the goal will be to create a different group with normal hearing and people with a moderate hearing loss and people with severe loss and try to understand better how this vulnerable population is affected by the problem.”

He said interventions for restaurants with noise problems range from easy to complicated arrangements, but brought up a pizza chain in London that employs domes over tables that keep conversation in and noise out, although the disadvantage is you cannot easily move the tables.

Another restaurant in Los Angeles uses an array of microphones in the ceiling that record noises in real time. That technique allows for a static noise environment that is not dependent on the number of patrons.

“So I’m controlling the reflection by means of artificial acoustics and I can do whatever I want with it,” he said.

Changes can be as easy as changing a tablecloth to muffle sound.

“It’s just a matter of being aware of the problem, and wanting to find a solution.”

If there is a solution to be found, you can be assured that Dr. Bottalico’s voice will be heard.

Editor’s note:

To reach Vince Lara-Cinisomo, email vinlara@illinois.edu.
 

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