Prof. Lauri Savioja and I (Jonathan Botts) just wrapped up a very productive two-week research trip to the University of Edinburgh.  We worked with Stefan Bilbao and his research team on various aspects of room acoustic modeling with finite difference methods.

We have several ongoing projects with this group, and the visit spawned one or two more.  We can post more details as results are published, but we discussed perception of modeling errors in room simulation, some stability issues with finite difference simulation, and how to actually extend these methods to realistic rooms.

The University (mostly the James Clerk Maxwell Building) was also a pretty cool place for physics.  On the floors, they have several forms of Maxwell's equations.  And upstairs, somewhere in the labyrinth of halls, Nobel Laureate Peter Higgs has an office.  We didn't find the actual office, but we did find a signed chalkboard:

In the end it was a pretty great trip!