Committee Members

Honored Women in ASA

Dr. Illene J. Busch-Vishniac

Illene Busch-Vishniac was awarded the Silver Medal in Engineering Acoustics on December 5, 2001 for development of novel electret microphones and of precision micro-electro-mechanical sensors and positioners.

Illene received a BS/BA degree in physics and mathematics (magna cum laude) from the University of Rochester in 1976. In 1977, she joined the Acoustical Society of America. She then received an MSc. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in 1981, both in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Illene was elected as a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 1987, and has received the R. Bruce Lindsay Award from the Acoustical Society of America.

In addition to serving on several committees, and as the Vice President of the Society (1996-1997), Illene has been a member of the Women in Acoustics Committee since 1992.

The Silver Medal is presented to individuals, without age limitations, for contributions to the advancement of science, engineering, or human welfare through the applications of acoustic principles, or through research accomplishment in acoustics

Dr. Lisa M. Zurk

Lisa M. Zurk of MIT Lincoln Laboratory has been awarded a Fulbright program grant in mathematics to lecture and conduct research at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The Fulbright grant provides funding in the 2000-2001 academic year for Dr. Zurk to conduct research in the area of electromagnetic and acoustic wave propagation and scattering in stochastic media at the Rolf Nevanlinna Institute.

The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State sponsors the Fulbright Program, America\022s flagship international educational exchange program. The program was established in 1946 under legislation by former Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. As part of the Fulbright program, the U.S. Scholar Program sends approximately 800 established American scholars and professionals a year to more than 125 countries for teaching and research. Recipients of a Fulbright grant are selected on the basis of their academic or professional achievement and their demonstrated leadership capabilities in their field. The thousands of prominent Fulbrighters include Craig Barrett, President and CEO of INTEL; Michael Dertouzos, Director of MIT Laboratory of Computer Science; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, U.S. Senator; and Diana Natalicio, President, University of Texas, El Paso.

Dr. Zurk received the BS in computer science from the University of Massachusetts in 1985, the MS in electrical and computer Engineering from Northeastern University in 1990, and the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington in 1995. From 1985-1989 she worked at Nova Biomedical, in Waltham, MA and from 1990-1995 she was a research assistant at the Applied Physics Laboratory in Seattle, WA. Since 1996 she has been technical staff member in the Advanced Array Technology Group at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Her research at MIT is in the area of electromagnetic and acoustic propagation with application to airborne radar and sonar signal processing. Dr. Zurk also holds an adjunct faculty at Northeastern University teaching graduate courses in acoustics, electromagnetic theory, and applied mathematics. She has received previous awards and distinctions, including the Pew Teaching Leadership Award in 1995, the Young Scientist Award in 1995, and honorary induction into the Electromagnetic Academy in 1999. She is the author of more than 30 technical papers on electromagnetics and acoustics, and she is a member of the Women in Acoustics Committee (Acoustical Society of America) and the Women's Advisory Board at MIT.

Dr. Alice Suter

The Acoustical Society of America will award Alice Suter the Distinguished Service Citation for her exemplary service to the ASA over the past two decades.

Alice's contributions to the Society have been numerous. In the Spring of this year, Alice stepped down as editor of Echoes, the Society's popular and popularized publication about interesting happenings in acoustics. She has served as Echoes editor since 1991, and as co-editor in 1990 - its year of inception. Over that time, Alice conceptualized, organized, produced, and oversaw the publication of the Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter Echoes each year, about 30 issues total.

Some of Alice's other notable contributions to the Society include service on: the Executive Council, 1986-89; the Committee on Public Relations since 1988 - serving as Chair from 1988-94; the Technical Committee on Noise 1980-89, 1991-94, and 1995 to present; and the Technical Committee on Physiological and Psychological Acoustics 1976-79. At the regional level of the Society, Alice was elected President, Vice-President, and Secretary of the Cincinnati Chapter among years during 1989-1992. She became a Fellow of the Society in 1987.

Other professional organizations have also commended Alice's work in acoustics. From the National Hearing Conservation Association she received the Outstanding Leadership and Service Award and the Outstanding Hearing Conservationist Award. She is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.

Alice began her career in acoustics after earning an M.S. in education of the deaf at Gallaudet. During the 60's and early 70's, her focus was clinical audiology - initially working as a clinical and subsequently supervisory audiologist at the Washington D. C. Department of Health, then moving to the DC Veterans Administration Hospital as a clinical audiologist while pursuing doctoral studies in audiology at the University of Maryland, and later becoming Director of the Audiometric Assistant Program of the National Association of Hearing and Speech Agencies. She received her Ph. D. in 1977.

Work on hearing conservation and noise control were central to Alice's career from the mid 70's on. It was during this time that she became influential in noise criteria development, regulation, and public policy. She was Senior Bioacoustical Scientist at the Office of Noise Abatement and Control, US Environmental Protection Agency from 1973-78 and Senior Scientist and Manager - Noise Standard, US Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) from 1978-82. At OSHA, she made a vital contribution toward preservation of hearing health in US industry; she was principal author - overseeing development and preparation - of a significantly strengthened enacted amendment to OSHA's noise standard for hearing conservation programs. Her last tour of regular employment, 1988-90, was as a Visiting Scientist in Research Audiology at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health where she originated and implemented research and information for dissemination on hearing-protection and - conservation programs.

Throughout the 90's (in addition to editing Echoes), Alice has worked as a consultant and writer in various areas of hearing conservation and noise for clients in medicine, industry and government. Her clients have included the World Health Organization, citizens' groups, and government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels.

Various professional organizations that have benefited from Alice's participation during her career include the Council for Accreditation in Occupational Hearing Conservation, for which she was on the Board of Directors from 1984-86, and also served as a Certified Course Director. For the American National Standards Institute, she was on the Acoustical Standards Management board and four different working groups concerned with noise, its measurement, or hearing conservation, among the years of 1978-91. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association enjoyed Alice's service in various ways, including membership on five different committees and a task force. Alice continues to serve on the Publications Committee of the National Hearing Conservation Association and also participated on the Executive Council from 1984-87.

Dr. Eliza Michalopoulou

Zoi-Heleni (Eliza) Michalopoulou obtained the Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1988, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Duke University, Durham, NC, in 1990 and 1993 respectively. In January 1994 she joined the Department of Mathematics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology as a research assistant professor. Since September 1996 she has held a joint appointment as an assistant professor with the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at N.J.I.T., where she is also affiliated with the Center for Applied Mathematics and Statistics and the Center for Communications and Signal Processing Research. Her research interests include inverse problems in underwater acoustics, acoustical signal processing, detection and estimation theory, and pattern recognition. She is a member of the Acoustical Society of American, IEEE,, and the Technical Chamber of Greece.

Dr. Michalopoulou was recently awarded a grant through the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program (YIP). The YIP research project will build on work she has been pursuing in three related areas: broadband matched-field processing, active time-domain matched-field processing, and marine mammal signal analysis using matched-field deconvolution. Broadband and time-domain matched-field are areas of development currently of great importance, both to the research community and to the Navy, where robust MFP will provide the next generation of Anti-Submarine Warfare detection and localization algorithms. Applying these techniques to marine mammal vocalizations will be an exciting demonstration of this process.

More information about the ONR Young Investigators Program can be found at http://www.onr.navy.mil/sci_tech/special/onrpgadk.htm

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