Elias Zea Marcano

I am an assistant professor of engineering acoustics at The Marcus Wallenberg Laboratory for Sound and Vibration Research (MWL). My research interests lie at the intersection of acoustics and applied mathematics. In particular, I am interested in theoretical and experimental methods in noise source separation and quantification, aeroacoustics, and room acoustics, with a focus on sparse signal processing, harmonic analysis, and data-driven approaches.

I am a member of the Swedish Acoustical Society, Engineers of Sweden, the Acoustical Society of America, and IEEE, and a council member of the European Acoustics Association's Technical Committees on Signal Processing and Computational Acoustics. I serve as a reviewer in The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, The Journal of Sound and Vibration, Applied Acoustics, EURASIP Journal on Audio, Speech, and Music Processing, Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, and Signal, Image, and Video Processing. I am currently a Guest Editor in the Journal of Theoretical and Computational Acoustics.

News

• Jan 2026, New paper: E. Zea, M. Laudato, J. Andén, A boostlet transform for wave-based acoustic signal processing in space–time, Signal Processing 244, 115028, 2026.

Ongoing research

• Sparse wavefield sampling and reconstruction. Funded by the Swedish Research Council.

• Modeling and measurement of sound absorption and scattering. Funded by the Swedish Research Council.

• Vibro-acoustic methods for environmental urban noise. Funded by the Unite! Seed Fund.

• Aeroacoustics applications to electric fans. Funded by the Swedish Energy Agency and FFI.

• Sustainable aviation with applications to noise, air-traffic management, and drones. Funded by EU Horizon Europe.

Selected publications

1. E. Zea, M. Laudato, J. Andén (2026), "A boostlet transform for wave-based acoustic signal processing in space-time", Signal Processing, 244, 115028.
2. E.Zea et al. (2023), "Sound absorption estimation of finite porous samples with deep residual learning", The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 154(4), 2321–2332.
3. E. Zea and M. Laudato (2021), "On the representation of wavefronts localized in space-time and wavenumber-frequency domains", JASA Express Letters 1(5), 054801.
4. E. Zea, E. Fernandez-Grande, and I. Lopez Arteaga (2020), "Separation of rail and wheel contributions to pass-by noise with sparse regularization methods", Journal of Sound and Vibration 487, 115627.
5. E. Zea (2019), "Compressed sensing of impulse responses in rooms of unknown properties and contents", Journal of Sound and Vibration 459, 114871.

All my publications can be found here.

Invited talks and popular scientific outputs

• 2025, Invited talk, "Boostlets: Theory and applications in spatiotemporal acoustic signal processing", Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria.

• 2025, Invited conference talk, "Introduction of the boostlet transform for acoustic signal processing", Forum Acusticum/Euronoise, Spanish Acoustical Society / European Acoustics Association, Málaga, Spain.

• 2025, Invited conference talk, "A data-driven two-microphone method for measuring the sound absorption of finite absorbers", Forum Acusticum/Euronoise, Spanish Acoustical Society / European Acoustics Association, Málaga, Spain.

• 2024, Invited conference talk, "Experimental validity of a ResNet to predict sound absorption coefficients of finite samples", Inter-Noise, French Acoustical Society / European Acoustics Association, Nantes, France.

• 2024, Popular scientific talk & panel discussion, "Applications of machine learning in engineering acoustics", Acusticat V Congrés d’Acústica de Catalunya, Generalitat de Catalunya, Manresa, Spain.

• 2023, Invited conference talk, "A representation theory for waves localized in space-time", Recent Advances in Theoretical Physics and its Neighborhoods, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Naples, Italy.

• 2022, Invited conference talk, "Prediction of eigenfrequencies in non-rectangular rooms with machine learning", International Congress on Acoustics, Acoustical Society of Korea / International Commission for Acoustics, Gyeongju, South Korea.

• 2021, Invited conference talk (online), "Learning the finite size effect for in-situ absorption measurement", Euronoise (e-Congress), Portuguese Acoustical Society / European Acoustics Association.

• 2020, Popular scientific talk (online), "Sparse sampling of sound fields in space-time well below the Nyquist rate", Ljuddagen (Day of Sound), Swedish Acoustical Society. Popular scientific article published in Ljudbladet (in Swedish).

Recorded talks

• Oct 2021, Conference paper: E. Zea, E. Brandão, M. Nolan, J. Andén, J. Cuenca, U.P. Svensson, Learning the finite size effect for in-situ absorption measurement, Presentation recorded for Euronoise (e-Congress), 2021.

• Dec 2020, Conference paper: E. Zea, E. Fernandez-Grande, I. Lopez Arteaga, Sparsity-driven separation of railway rolling noise with a microphone array, Presentation recorded for e-Forum Acusticum, 2020.

Supervision

PhDs/Research Engineers:

• Philip Andersson, PhD thesis, KTH / SAAB (2025–).
• Michail Vourakis (co-supervisor), PhD thesis, Chalmers / KTH / Volvo (2021–2026).
• Birçan Işik, Research engineer, KTH (2025–2026).

Postdocs:

• Parthiban Loganathan (co-supervised), KTH (2023–2025).
• Hakkı Aksoy (co-supervised), KTH (2023–2025).
• Ramón Pozuelo, KTH (2023–2024).
• Marco Laudato (co-supervised), KTH (2022–2023).

MSc:

• Annika Strömhäll, KTH / Aalto (2026).
• Ryuto Saeki, KTH (2025–2026).
• Martin Karlsson, Individual project SD2102, KTH / NTNU / Siemens / KAIST (2025–2026).
• Damiano Corsini (co-supervised), MSc internship, KTH / Politecnico di Torino (2025).
• Lino Conord, KTH / Sonic Shield Solutions / Le Mans University (2025).
• Zhuchenyang Liu, KTH / ABB / Linköping University (2025).
• Shuhua Chen, KTH / Aalto / ABB / Linköping University (2025).
• Otto Goldkhul Karlsson, Individual project SD2101, KTH / NTNU / Siemens (2025).
• Nadine Tabeshnia, Runsheng Zhou, Individual project SD2101, KTH / NTNU / Siemens (2024).
• Leon Emmerich, Internship, KTH / TU Munich / Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (2024).
• Awen Callo, Individual project SD2101, KTH / Universidad Politécnica de Madrid / Le Mans University (2024).
• Patrik Aste, KTH / Universidade Federal de Santa Maria / DTU / Siemens / NTNU (2024).
• Mustafa Kulbay, KTH / Structor (2024).
• Alessandro Meroli, KTH / University of Trento / Aritco Lift (2024).
• Jonathan Ling, KTH / Zound Industries (2023).
• Oscar Lundin, KTH / Siemens / NTNU (2022).
• Felix Vernersson, KTH / Delta Akustik (2022).
• A. Gaia Cairelli (co-supervised), Politecnico di Milano (2020).
• Viviam Reyes, University of York / KTH (2016).
• Luca Manzari, KTH (2014). Awarded "Best MSc Thesis" by the Swedish Acoustical Society (2015).

BSc:

• Martin Kero, Axel Löfgren, KTH / LatencyFix (2026).
• Nelly Brodin, KTH / LatencyFix (2026).
• Gimle Larpes, Victor Windahl, KTH (2026).
• Awen Callo, Internship, KTH / Universidad Politécnica de Madrid / Le Mans University (2025).
• Emma Skogman, Noah Svensson, KTH (2025).
• Robin Åhrling, Annika Strömhäll, KTH / Delta Akustik (2024).
• Ellen Waara-Ankarstrand, Molly Wörman, KTH / Stiga (2023).
• Rebecka Vestman, Maja Westberg, KTH / Astrid Education (2021).
• Pontus Gräsberg, Viktor Söderlund, Individual project SD2101, KTH / ACAD (2020).
• Jessica Chow, Estelle Kouamé, KTH / Scania (2020).
• Gustav Eriksson, Individual project SD2102, KTH (2019).
• Ties van Loon, Internship, Technical University of Eindhoven / ABB (2018).

Are you interested in doing your Master's thesis with me? Check out a list of MSc projects on Canvas.

Teaching

I am involved in the following courses at KTH:

• Examiner in SD2102 Individual Project Work on Sound and Vibrations, Second Cycle (2025–).
• Teacher in FDT3318 Room Acoustics and Spatial Audio, Third Cycle (2024–).
• Examiner and teacher in FSD3140 Signal Analysis, Third Cycle (2024–).
• Examiner in SD2101 Individual Project Work on Sound and Vibrations, Second Cycle (2024–).
• Examiner and teacher in SD211X Degree Project in Technical Acoustics, Second Cycle (2024–).
• Examiner, course responsible, and teacher in SD2125 Signals and Mechanical Systems, First/Second Cycle (2023–).
• Teacher in SD2166 Building Acoustics and Community Noise, Second Cycle (2020–).

Additionally, I have been a lecturer in the following activities outside KTH:

• Autumn School Series on Acoustics (ASSA), TU/Eindhoven:
  • Machine Learning School – Unsupervised Learning Methods, Lecturer with Evren Yarman and School Co-organizer with Cédric Van Hoorickx, Maarten Hornikx, and Marcus Maeder (2025).
  • Computational Acoustics School – Data-driven Approach & Machine Learning Techniques, Lecturer with Marcus Maeder (2024).
  • Theoretical & Physical Acoustics School – Mathematical Acoustics, Lecturer with Maarten Hornikx (2022).
• EE838 Introductory to Acoustic Engineering, Guest Lecturer, "What can machine learning tell us about waves in space-time?", University of Campinas (2021).