NNI INCE-USA President’s Message

Another year has passed as your INCE-USA President with one more year left in my term. I closed last year by “Wishing Everyone Happy Holidays and COVID-Free 2021”, but it seems like we still have the effects of COVID-19 all around us. Yet, INCE-USA continues to be financially stable a leader of the noise control community, and hopefully, a vital part of your profession.

Starting right at the top, I am happy to announce that Dr. Judy Rocat of Cross Spectrum Acoustics, Inc. is our President-Elect and will take over as president in September 2022. It might seem like I am counting the days, but that is not the case. I bring up Judy’s presidency because I am happy to hand the reins over to a younger person, wh is well respected, dedicated member, and a woman, Judy will be only the third female of the 42 past presidents. Those previous female presidents were Nancy Timmerman and Dr. Patricia Davies, who are both still active within INCE-USA.

Next, I would like to thank all the officers, directors, and staff at INCE-USA for their tireless work this past year. This includes our management office team at Virtual, Inc. We would be lost without our eyes, ears, and hands, Caitlin McAuslin. She has been there for INCE-USA on many critical occasions. I also want to thank John Lessard for their account leadership and guidance. While not paid staff and out of our most respected members, I cannot fail to recognize Jou Cuschieri, our Executive Director. His full-time job is with Lockheed Martin, yet he finds time to dedicate many hours per week to the operation of INCE-USA. Thanks, Joe, for your continued leadership as ED!

Conferences have been the biggest challenge during the COVID years. As you may all know, INTERNOISE 2021 was supposed to be held in Washington DC this last August, but instead was moved to online. It marked the 50th anniversary of INTERNOISE and was a great success as a virtual event. I would like to thank Chair Raj Singh and the rest of his committee for careful planning and finding unique ways to make a virtual event fun and engaging. We are now looking ahead to NOISECON 2022 which will be in Lexington, Kentucky from June 13 to 15 on the University of Kentucky campus. Chair David Herin is working on making this a full in-person event and we hope you will plan to attend. Also, David can still use help so if you want to be a part of NC22 please reach out to me (mbahtiarian@acentech.com) or avid (david.herrin@uky.edu).

In other big news, INCE-USA awarded the first member’s choice award to Felicia Doggett and her firm Metropolitan Acoustics for the One Riverside Pool Isolation project (see a photo of Felicia and her team with the award). VP of Awards and Honors, Dana Lodico, also awarded the first student scholarship to Sunit Girdhar who is studying at Michigan Technological University. We have to than the INCE Foundation for financial support of this scholarship as INCE-USA and the INCE foundation equally contribute to this $6,000 scholarship.

On other fronts, VP of Board Certification, Paul Burge, and the Certification Board are closing out the re-certification period for all of us “Board Certs”. If you were originally Board Certified in 2017 or earlier and have not submitted the re-certification spreadsheet form, please work on this over your holiday break. The deadline is December 31, 2021. Also, I would like to report that we had 8 people sit for the INCE Professional Exam held this August in Minneapolis, MN, and are currently being evaluated for Board Certification.

All of our other programs are buzzing along. NCEJ articles can now be published (if elected by the author) with open access. Thanks to NCEJ editor Jim Thompson for making that happen. Eoin King left Hartford, Connecticut, and moved back home to Galway, Ireland where he continues to be our Noise News International (NNI) editor. Our Noise Control Engineering courses continue to be offered by three dedicated instructors: Tyler Dare, Andrew Barnard, and Corinne Darvennes. Thanks to all of these members for their significant contributions to INCE-USA.

Moving ahead into 2022, we have two exciting new programs that should be offered. One is an INCE-USA sponsored seminar in room acoustic which we hope to offer with CEU credits. The second program is a “sound-technician” certification program. This program is designed for non-engineering staff to have formal training and certification in things like making interior and exterior sound measurements to certain standards. Stay tuned for both new programs.

Finally, I would like to close out by saying we are in the first year of our new corporate calendar year that runs from October 1st to September 30th of each year. This allowed us to have our first Annual General Meeting (AGM) at our yearly conference (this year was INTERNOISE). In the past, the AGM was held during our winter board meetings and no members would attend. As I have said in the past, we hope the holding INCE-USA AGM at our US-based conferences will bring about greater member engagement.

What a year 2021 has been for everyone, and I truly hope that each of you and your families is healthy, safe, and employed! As I said last year, INCE-USA’s successes are achieved only due to efforts from many volunteers, and will ask; How can YOU contribute?

Wishing Everyone Happy Holidays and all the best in 2022

Michael Bahtiarian, INCE Bd. Cert., INCE-USA President