Academics is often a visual pursuit – reading journal articles, examining manuscripts, looking through a microscope. But some things can only be learned through sound. The boom of volcanoes, buzz of mosquito wings or tone of a person’s voice all convey information lost to a visual observer. The challenge in all of these is learning how to make sense of the sounds around us, in some cases with technology and in others by simply listening to one another more carefully.

Beyond helping us interact with the world and with each other, sound can be an almost physical tool. Frequencies beyond the range of human hearing can wake up sleeping appliances and arrange heart cells in the lab. Sound waves can even be a means of peering into the body and diagnosing health conditions.

Stanford scholars from across medicine, engineering, social sciences and the arts are working together to interpret and manipulate this audible world, and to restore hearing to those whose ability is diminished. They’re even helping people learn to listen more carefully to each other.