Dr. Martin Lawless joined the Mechanical and Facilities Engineering Department as an assistant professor in 2022. Dr. Lawless's research interests broadly involve the human perception of sound, including areas of virtual acoustics, musical acoustics, architectural acoustics, and neuroimaging. At SUNY Maritime, his acoustics research focuses on noise and virtual acoustics of off-shore vessels. Dr. Lawless is also interested in project-based learning and problem-solving strategies in undergraduate engineering education.  Dr. Lawless earned his Ph.D. in Acoustics in 2018 from the Pennsylvania State University with a dissertation on using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess the brain's auditory and reward response to reverberation in musical passages. From 2018-2021, he worked as a visiting assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at Cooper Union. Dr. Lawless is an active member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE). He serves as the chair of Students Meet Members for Lunch, which is a mentorship program of the ASA.

Education

  • Ph.D., Graduate Program in Acoustics, The Pennsylvania State University, 2018

  • B.E., Mechanical Engineering, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 2013

Experience

  • Postdoctoral Researcher, Institut Jean le Rond Alembert, Sorbonne Université, Paris, 2021

  • Visiting Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, 2018-2021

Publications

  • Lawless, M. S., Giglia, M., and Wootton, D. M. "Acoustics@Home: Laboratories and student-led projects conducted for an undergraduate engineering experimentation course during the COVID-19 pandemic." J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 152 43-54 (2022).

  • Poirier-Quinot, D., Lawless, M. S., Stitt, P., and Katz, B. F. G., “HRTF performance evaluation: methodology and metrics for localization accuracy and learning assessment,” in Advances in Fundamental and Applied Research on Spatial Audio, edited by B. F. G. Katz and P. Majdak, InTechOpen (2022). 

  • Simson, A., Lawless, M. S., Lee, C., Shay, L., Cumberbatch, T. J., Wade-Smith, A., Shlayan, N., “Teaching the first-year, hands-on engineering design experience online,” 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference, Virtual Conference (July 2021). 

  • Ronsse, L. M., Lawless, M. S., Kanter, S. J., and Carreon-Bradley, D.T., "Rooms for the Learned Musician: A 20-Year Retrospective on the Acoustics of Music Education Facilities", Cham, Switzerland: Springer (2021).

  • Philipson, Y., and Lawless, M. S. “Application of dual-stage exhaust system using an expansion chamber and resonator for Formula SAE.” Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 42, 045002 (2020). 1st Place: Best Student Paper Award TCPA. 

  • Lawless, M. S. and Vigeant, M. C. “Sensitivity of the human auditory cortex and reward network to reverberant musical stimuli.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 147 2121-2134 (2020). 

  • Lawless, M. S. and Vigeant, M. C. “Effects of the test method and participant musical training on preference ratings of stimuli with different reverberation times.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 142, 2258-2272 (2017). 

  • Lawless, M. S. and Vigeant, M. C. “Investigating the emotional response to room acoustics: A functional magnetic resonance imaging study.” J. Acoust. Soc. Am., 138(4), EL417-EL423 (2015).