Institute of Acoustics Senior Meeting

On the 27th January 2011 London South Bank University hosted the first Senior Members meeting of the Institute of Acoustics. The inaugural address was given Professor Bridget Shield in front of 35 distinguished guests. The talk was entitled from PG to PE (Postgraduate to President Elect) and was very well received by all!

Student wins Bradford Newman award for 2011

John Zeman won the Newman best student dissertation for his Masters project on, "The measurement and evaluation of bespoke three-dimensional absorptive panels - A comparative analysis". An investigation into the designs of Anne Kyyro Quinn. The Robert Bradford Newman Medal is for excellence in the study of acoustics and its application to architecture. The prize will be awarded by the Acoustical Society of America. John will present his work at the 161st Acoustical Society of America in Seattle, May 2011. Well done John! Photo was taken when John attended the Concert Hall Research Group's Summer Institute in Santa Fe last summer.

Sound Absorbing Mirror Refreshed

On the 21st January 2011 the sound absorbing mirrors installed in the teaching rooms of the Royal Academy of Music were refreshed to an almost new condition. Using a heatgun on low power the heat shrunk material were tightened to give a perfect image. Let's hope the musicians play nicely with the mirrors!

Matthew Torjussen starts PhD

Matthew Torjussen joined the Acoustics Group in January 2011 to starts his PhD. His doctorate is on developing speech intelligibility tests for young children and is sponsored by noise.co.uk. Welcome Mat.

MSc student wins best IoA Diploma prize

Congratulations go to Sarah Large, the winner of the 2010 IOA Diploma in Acoustics and Noise Control prize. In achieving merits in all three written papers, laboratory module and project (measuring background noise: the need for STDs), she achieved the highest average mark of all students. Sarah, an acoustic consultant at MAS Environmental attended the course at Colchester Institute. A music graduate from New Hall College, Cambridge University, she is now studying on the 2nd year of the Masters course.

Press release for the Quiet Dental Drill

Welcome to 2011. Let's start the year with a joint press release from King's College, Brunel and LSBU concerning the future development of a new quiet device for dental drill. The college wishes to commercialise the Acoustics Group's research in the form of an MP3 plug-in box to reduce the stress of doing to the dentist! Listen to the interview on BBC Today programme, 10th January 2011

End of 2010 Summary

Thanks for all your support over 2010. The Acoustics Group went from strength to strength, with 20 new students joining the Masters course. We successfully completed two KTP projects and welcomed two new researchers: Luis and Nick to the group. We have strengthened links with industry (Arup, Vanguardia, RBA Acoustics, Capita Symonds, Telent) through guest lectures, scholarships, prizes, consultancy, working groups and facility sharing. The Group gave 11 presentations at three separate conferences with 12 students attending the IoA Ghent conference. Links with the USA have developed with MSc student John Zeman attending the CHRG Summer Institute in Sante Fe, and Steve becoming a member of the Newman committee, thanks to Nick Durup winning a Newman medal.
We are looking forward to 2011 when two researchers are due to complete their PhDs, the ICBEN conference organised by Bridget, and we start a new EPSRC project. Best Wishes for the New Year.