UI voice Assistant Professor David Meyer (1992 BM) is engaged in interdisciplinary singing voice research with colleagues in the UI College of Engineering (Biomedical Engineering Associate Professor Sajan Goud Lingala and Biomedical Engineering PhD student Swati Ramtilak), and Royal Holloway, University of London (Dr. David Howard). Together, this team is working with medical imaging to better understand the singing voice and its function in the body.

Singers are the only musicians whose instrument is invisible. At the University of Iowa, this team is using medical imaging in an interdisciplinary collaboration with Biomedical Engineering and Radiology to better model the vocal instrument.

An image from this research was entered in to the university-wide research image competition, “Capture Your Research.” Students, faculty, and staff submitted one image that captured the essence of their research. These were judged on originality/creativity, aesthetic – appeal of the image, relationship between the image and their research, and clarity of the written description.

Dr. Meyer’s entry won second place in the faculty researcher category. The team's winning image is a compilation of MRI scans of Dr. Meyer's ear, vocal tract (the airspace in the throat - from the vocal folds to lips), skull, and the external surface of his head. He is singing an /a/ vowel as in the word, "father" in an operatic voice.

The image was also selected by the Voice Foundation to be the cover of their international symposium in Philadelphia last summer (2025).

The winning image and award are temporarily on display in the Rita Benton Music Library in the Voxman Music Building.

The digital gallery of this year’s winners is available here:
2025 Award Winners – Capture Your Research