Rate My Professor Filippo Fazi

Professor Filippo Maria Fazi is the Professor of Acoustics and Signal Processing in the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR) at the University of Southampton. He serves as the Director of Research for the ISVR and leads the Virtual Acoustics and Audio Engineering (VAAE) team. Fazi earned his degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Brescia, Italy, in 2005, focusing his master's thesis on room acoustics. He then pursued his PhD in acoustics at the ISVR, completing it in 2010 with a thesis titled "Sound field reproduction." In 2010, he received a five-year research fellowship from the Royal Academy of Engineering and was appointed Lecturer at the ISVR. He advanced to Associate Professor in 2015, was named Director of Research in 2019, and promoted to Professor in 2020. Fazi has been a visiting researcher at institutions including the University of California, San Diego (2009), IRCAM in France (2011), the University of Parma (2016), and Tohoku University in Japan (2018). Additionally, he is the co-founder and Chief Scientist of Audioscenic, a company developing listener-adaptive 3D audio technologies.

Fazi's research focuses on acoustics, audio technologies, electroacoustics, and digital signal processing, particularly acoustical inverse problems, multi-channel systems such as Ambisonics and Wave Field Synthesis, cross-talk cancellation, virtual acoustics, and microphone arrays. His work encompasses 3D audio capture and reproduction—including binaural audio, Ambisonics, and head-related transfer functions—loudspeaker and microphone arrays, sound field control, spatial hearing perception, and auralization. With over 150 peer-reviewed publications and several patents, his contributions include key works like "The ring of silence in Ambisonics: spectral impairments in loudspeaker and binaural reproduction" (2026, IEEE/ACM TASLP) and "Influence of back wall reflections on Crosstalk Cancellation systems with directional loudspeakers" (2025). Fazi has garnered prestigious awards, including the Tyndall Medal from the Institute of Acoustics (2018), Fellowship of the Audio Engineering Society, the ANC best young paper prize (2008), and ICA Young Scientist Grants (2010). Since 2010, he has secured over £4 million in research funding from EPSRC, the Royal Academy of Engineering, and industry collaborators like the BBC and Huawei, significantly enhancing the ISVR's reputation as a global leader in audio research.