Darrin Verhagen is an award-winning composer, studying the psychophysiology of aesthetic experience. His creative practice research includes over 140 national and international soundtrack credits in theatre, dance, screen and installation and informs his work in interventions focussed on wellness, ageing and dementia.

Collaborative publications have included research with RMIT Automotive Engineering on the link between vibration and drowsiness and with sleep researchers on the effects of melodicity in alarm tones on sleep inertia. He has eye tracked the effect of sound on focus and attention in cinema, tracked GSR and facial emotion to test the effect of agency-free kinesis on musical experience, and written on sound in science fiction films alongside recent developments in soundtrack practice.

He is the director of the Audiokinetic Experiments (AkE) Lab, has collaborated with the Health Transformation Lab and currently works with the RMIT Pathways for Healthy Ageing group exploring wellness interventions using sound and vibration. His TuneChair invention, hardware that choreographs movement and vibration to amplify the emotional experience of music, won a Dementia Australia award in 2018 and is scheduled for upcoming trials in Aged Care facilities in Victoria and Brisbane.