Andrew Vandali graduated from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1985, majoring in Communication Engineering. In 1989 he joined the the department of Otolaryngology at the University of Melbourne where he was employed as a research engineer in the field of speech processing for cochlear implants.

Andrew's experience includes design and coordination of research activities, as well as hands-on research and supervision of junior researchers. Over the last 10 years, Andrew has worked in the field of pitch coding for cochlear implants, an interesting and challenging field in which he is highly motivated because of the poor performance of cochlear implant users in pitch perception tasks and because of the large group of hearing impaired people that can potentially benefit from this research.

Andrew is currently funded through the Hearing CRC as a senior research engineer/scientist. His research is focused on developing improved sound/speech coding strategies and systems (hardware and software) for cochlear implant users.

Andrew enrolled in a PhD in 2009, title: Optimisation of rate-pitch perception in cochlear implant hearing.

PhD research will focus on:

• development of cochlear implant sound coding strategies that enhance coding of rate-pitch;
• development of a model accounting for rate-pitch perception in cochlear implants;
• devlopment of training paradigms and software to teach listeners to hear and separate musical features such as pitch and timbre.