Christian T. Herbst, born in 1970, is an Austrian voice researcher. After studying vocal pedagogy at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, he worked as a voice coach for several years (including with the Salzburg Cathedral Boys' Choir, the Salzburg State Music School/Musikum Salzburg and the Tölzer Knabenchor). This work sparked his interest in the physics and physiology of the voice. Influenced by a year-long research stay at the Centre for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics at Stanford University, he decided to devote himself full-time to voice research.
After completing his doctorate in biophysics, he worked at the Bioacoustics Laboratory, Department of Cognitive Biology at the University of Vienna, and as a post-doctoral researcher at the Voice Research Laboratory, Department of Biophysics, University of Olomouc. Since 2016, he has been working on the project ‘Comparative Biomechanics of Mammalian Sound Production’, funded by an APART scholarship from the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Christian Herbst is a member of the advisory board of the Voice Foundation and an editorial board member of the Journal of Voice and Logopedics, Phoniatrics and Vocology. As part of his research into physiological processes in the singer's larynx, he has published several award-winning papers in international journals. He developed the phasegram, a method for visualising chaos and chaos-like phenomena, and electroglottographic wavegrams, a visualisation technique for vocal fold vibration in speech and singing. As head of the Bioacoustics Laboratory at the Department of Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna, he conducts studies on the physics of voice production in mammals, among other things. In this context, he published a study on the physical voice production mechanism in elephants in the renowned Science Journal. He teaches music medicine at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg.