NNI INCE-USA President’s Message

Date published:

By Judy Rochat, Ph.D., INCE-USA President (jrochat@csacoustics.com)
December 2022

Hello! As the new INCE-USA President, I’d like to introduce myself: I have been involved with INCE-USA since 1995 when I gave my first presentation at INTER-NOISE as a graduate student at Penn State. I have since served on the Board of Directors, as the Vice President for Technical Activities, as co-chair of the Transportation Committee, and as the Noise Control Engineering Journal Associate Editor for Transportation. I live in California, and I have worked in both the public and private sectors – I’m thrilled to be coming up on five years at Cross-Spectrum Acoustics, Inc. I am an acoustics nerd, and transportation-related noise and vibration are my passion! It’s an honor to serve as the INCE-USA President, and I sincerely appreciate the opportunity.

INCE-USA Board of Directors meeting, June 12, 2022, Lexington, KY: Judy Rochat & Mike Bahtiarian

First order of business: thank you Mike Bahtarian, for your leadership and for helping us through a difficult time as the Pandemic President! Mike is now serving as Past President and is still heavily involved. Contact Mike (mbahtiarian@acentech.com) if you are interested in serving as an INCE-USA director.

Speaking of serving, thank you to all officers, directors, and staff who served in 2022. It is the dedication of these individuals who allow INCE-USA to provide conferences, training, board certification, publications, and more. Joe Cuschieri continues to provide valuable leadership as the Executive Director, and we welcomed a new Vice President of Honors and Awards, Andrew Barnard. We also welcomed some new Directors this year: Ethan Bourdeau, Ahmed El-Aassar, Andrea Frey, and Sarah Taubitz, along with two Directors At Large: Charlie Moritz and Pranab Saha.

As for conferences, 2022 saw the return to in-person participation at NOISE-CON 2022, June 12-14 in Lexington, Kentucky. The General Chair, David Herrin, and Technical Chairs, David Copley, Patricia Davies, and Yangfan Liu, planned and executed a successful conference with 300+ registrants and 105 technical papers. Thanks to them, and others who helped, including the INCE-USA business office, Virtual, Inc., for all their hard work for the conference and other tasks throughout the year.

Organizers are working hard to deliver a successful NOISE-CON 2023, May 15-18 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This is a joint conference with the Transportation Research Board Noise & Vibration Committee (through May 19) and is co-located with the SAE Noise & Vibration Conference. With these three organizations, there will be numerous technical sessions, exhibitors, and networking opportunities. Thanks to the General Chair, Jim Thompson, for planning such a fantastic program! You don’t want to miss this – register now! And submit an abstract right away if you want to present. Later in the year (plenty of time to recover from NOISE-CON), join us at INTER-NOISE 2023, August 20-23 in Chiba (Greater Tokyo), Japan!

Awards this year presented at NOISE-CON 2022 included the following:

  • Martin Hirschorn / IAC Prize Best Paper Award: Michael T. Rose, B. Dagan Pielstick, Zach T. Jones, Scott D. Sommerfeldt
  • The William W. Lang Award for the Distinguished Noise Control Engineer: Felicia Doggett received this award.
  • Laymon N. Miller Award for Excellence in Acoustical Consulting: Arno Bommer
  • INCE Scholarship: Sam Underwood. (Please consider donating to the INCE Foundation, which helps to support this scholarship and other great causes related to noise control)
  • INCE-USA Members’ Choice Project Award: The project “Technology for a Quieter America Workshops and Reports” – Eric Wood, George Maling, Bob Hellweg, Adnan Akay, and Gregg Fleming

We are sad to have lost George Maling this year who served INCE from its inception until his passing. Please see the tribute to George in the September 2022 issue of NNI, honoring his work and contributions – he is greatly missed!

For publications, we want to again thank Jim Thompson for his continued efforts as editor of the Noise Control Engineering Journal (NCEJ). Thinking about submitting your work? Don’t wait! Take advantage of the dedicated editors and reviewers to help get your work published. Please think about expanding your successful and interesting past or future NOISE-CON or INTER-NOISE article into a journal-quality transcript. Also thank you to Eoin King who continues to be the Noise News International (NNI) editor, bringing interesting and informative noise news from around the world.

INCE-USA offerings … here’s what’s happening in 2023, beyond the conferences:

Noise Control Engineering Courses – 2022 had 80+ students enrolled! Will you enroll in 2023? Tyler Dare, Ph.D. is leading a team of instructors for the three distance education courses – learn the fundamentals of sound and vibration and progress through noise control engineering. Successful completion of all three courses will be accepted by INCE-USA in lieu of sitting for the Board Certification Examination! Note that the enthusiastic response to the self-paced, one-on-one instructed enhanced Course I has led to INCE-USA investing in expanding content for Courses II and III in 2023.

Webinars– INCE-USA held its first free webinar in July 2022 with roaring success! There were 300+ live attendees and 600+ registrants for “Building Acoustics: Sound Isolation,” sponsored by National Gypsum and presented by Felicia Doggett and Benjamin Davenny. Thanks to Kristin Cody, our Vice President of Public Relations for organizing! Two more Building Acoustics webinars are being planned for Spring 2023. Stay tuned for upcoming announcements … look for emails and follow INCE-USA on LinkedIn!

Also stay tuned for INCE-USA’s developing Sound Technician Certificate Program, which is currently being developed. Jeff Fullerton and Matt Golden co-chaired a committee to build the concept and RFP and are overseeing the development.

Although there is much more to say, I want to close with one last topic, INCE-USA finances: Although INCE-USA has very healthy investments, we have been operating at a loss in recent years, which we cannot sustain. In 2022, after many discussions, leadership has decided to return INCE-USA to its roots, depending more on volunteers. Please be patient with us as we navigate these increased responsibilities to help keep our organization strong and continue to offer exciting (and new!) content to our members and other participants. Thank you!

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year and all the best in 2023! Hope to see you soon!