A Musical Bio-feedback Loop to Facilitate Sleep

Rory Kirk

I graduated from the Brighton Institute of Modern Music (University of Sussex) in 2011 and spent the next six years working as a musician and guitar teacher. I moved to Sheffield in 2017 to study the MA in Psychology of Music and returned in January 2020 to start my PhD. Apart from my research subject my interests span a range of topics within the realms of music cognition, perception, and performance.


Rory's Projects

My research is focused around investigating music as an aid for sleep. Starting from the basis that music can be a useful tool in helping people sleep, my PhD project involves assessing properties of music that best facilitate sleep and modelling musical parameters with physiological states during the sleep onset process. The work is in collaboration with the development of a sleep aid device.

The PhD is funded by an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Doctoral Training Partnership and supervised by Prof. Renee Timmers (Department of Music), Dr. Maan van de Werken (SleepCogni, Braintrain2020 Ltd.), and Prof. George Panoutsos (Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering).