From the Archives Update: Member Society Profile—The French Acoustical Society (SFA) in 2019

The Société Française d’Acoustique (SFA) brings together French-speaking acousticians, practitioners, and academics. Founded in 1948 by Yves Rocard, it currently includes nearly 1,000 individual members from a large diversity of backgrounds (researchers, teachers, engineers, musicians, audiologists, architects, etc.) as well as members of legal entities (industrial companies and specialized laboratories in the acoustics field). SFA is a founding member of the European Acoustical Association (EAA).

Its vocation is to promote the circulation of scientific and technical information between the various actors of acoustics as well as the contacts between research laboratories and industrialists. As a “law of 1901” type association, the SFA is managed by a Board of Directors elected every two years by its members. It is structured into 2 regional sections and 11 technical committees (Transducers and ElectroAcoustics, Architectural and Urban Acoustics, Instrumentation and Signal, Physical Underwater and Ultrasound Acoustics, Musical Acoustics, Aero and HydroAcoustics, Noise and Vibrations, Sound Perception, Speech Acoustics, BioAcoustics, Experimentations in Acoustics).

The activities of the SFA are numerous:

• Organization of congresses and workshops. These events can be regular (the French Congress of Acoustics takes place every two years) or be more specifically organized to deal with novel subjects. The SFA organized international congresses such as the INTER-NOISE Congress in Nice in August 2000 and the Acoustics ’08 Paris Congress. This last congress brought together six events in the same location (154th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 5th FORUM ACUSTICUM, 9th French Congress of Acoustics, 7th European Conference on NOISE Control, 9th European Conference on Underwater Acoustics, and the 60th anniversary of the SFA itself) and gathered about 5,000 participants.
• Relations with international scientific societies. The SFA took an active role in the creation of the European Acoustics Association. It now promotes the international Acta Acustica United with Acustica journal and participates in the I-INCE Institute and the ICA Commission.
• Promotion of acoustics. The SFA is a natural interlocutor of numerous national authorities (e.g. the National Noise Council or various standardization committees). It promotes education in acoustics. It supports students’ participation at international congresses through scholarships.
• Dissemination of information through its weekly letter “Echo Hebdo,” its periodic bulletin Courrier de la SFA, and through the quarterly magazine Acoustique and Technique, published by the Noise Documentation and Information Center and in which the SFA participates actively.
• Relations with other national scientific societies, because acoustics is at the crossroads of numerous disciplines (solid or fluid mechanics, signal processing, cognitive psychology, speech, etc.).

Presently, the SFA is organizing for the European Acoustical Association the 9th Forum Acusticum Congress, which will be held in the World Heritage City of Lyon in April 2020. The year 2020 will be the international year of sound, promoted by the ICA. The SFA is involved in organizing the opening ceremony, which should be held in Paris in January 2020.