Biography
V. Debut is a French researcher working in Portugal for 13 years, addressing acoustic issues concerned with musical instruments. He merges pratical insights as a musician (oboe) and a physicist (MSc+PhD), and for nearly 15 years, he has worked on characterization, modeling, optimization and sound synthesis of musical instruments. Recently, in collaboration with public partners, he has produced works of international interest in the area of Cultural Heritage, for preserving rare musical instruments. Currently, he is the coordinator of the Music Acoustics research group at the Instituto de Etnomusicologia, Música e Dança, and is an invited professor at the New University of Lisbon (UNL, Portugal), where he lectures a series of courses on Acoustics at several academic levels, and is also in charge of the Acoustics and Sound Studies postgraduate program. Key outcomes of his work include the tuning assessment of the European’s largest 18th century carillons, the physics-based sound synthesis of the Portuguese guitar as well as the sound resurrection of the oldest bell recognized in Portugal from archaeological data, while a sideline of his research activities is knowledge transfer for companies in the field of instrument making, including joint work with TitaniumSound (France) and Royal Eisjbouts (Holand). He has been the coordinator of 3 research projects (2 international and 1 national), and was recently approached by the Portuguese government for an expert assignment in the action plan defined by Europa Nostra, to restore the historical carillons of the Mafra National Palace. Scientific productivity includes 1 book chapters, 60 papers (16 in international peer-reviewed journals; 44 in international conference proceedings), 5 technical reports. His work has been awarded five prizes (Entrepreneurship award Santander-Totta, 2017; Collaborative Research Project Prize, Santander-Totta, 2016; Best Paper Award, XXI Congreso Nacional de Ingeniera Mecanica, 2016; Associação Portuguesa de Museologia, 2015; International Symposium on Musical Acoustics, 2014).
