Alyssa Accomando earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Brown University in 2016, where she studied behavioral and neuroanatomical specializations of bat biosonar.
Alyssa Accomando is a basic and applied research scientist who primarily uses psychoacoustic techniques to answer questions about auditory processing and perception in echolocating animals. Her research has both technological and environmental applications. Alyssa earned her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Brown University in 2016, where she studied bat echolocation behavior in cluttered spaces. Her postdoctoral work with the NMMF included the study of directional hearing and biosonar echo classification in bottlenose dolphins. In addition to her postdoctoral research, Alyssa was a lecturer in the Psychology Department at UCSD where she taught an undergraduate Sound and Music Perception course. Alyssa volunteers her time with the NMMF’s outreach and education programs, and is an active member of the professional/academic community, including serving as a representative Animal Bioacoustics Technical Committee member for the Acoustical Society of America, and as a peer-reviewer for various scientific journals. Alyssa has experience conducting both laboratory and field research, as well as analyzing large datasets (behavioral, acoustic, and biological/neural including anatomical and AEP). Alyssa applies her expertise to the assessment of environmental impacts due to anthropogenic noise, particularly with regard to interpreting new scientific literature and developing predictions for sensitivity to hearing loss in marine mammals and birds. Alyssa is interested in collaborations to study 1) masking and hearing loss due to anthropogenic noise, 2) sound production, auditory processing, and acoustic perception, and 3) anatomical, biological, evolutionary, and behavioral adaptations for biosonar.
