The Student Council is charged with promoting the interests of Student Members in the Society. Activities of the Student Council include providing support to student members of the Society via a website and other means of disseminating information of mutual interest, advocating participation of students in Society activities and meetings, and promoting Society membership benefits to potential members. Students with general questions and concerns should contact their particular representative for more information.

Periodically, members of the Council graduate or move on with their career in acoustics. These transitions leave openings on the Council membership roster. If you are interested in being a representative for your technical committee, please don't hesitate to contact the current Council chair, Lauren Ronsse [lronsse@unomaha.edu].

Please click a section heading below to show/hide councilmember info:

Student Council Chair

Student Council Chair: Lauren Ronsse
Location: University of Nebraska - Lincoln
E-mail: lronsse@unomaha.edu



Lauren is a Ph.D. student at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln. She started her acoustical research career studying rock art acoustics on the prairies of Ellsworth County, Kansas. Since this exciting embarkment, Lauren has investigated the speech intelligibility of lecture halls and the effects of background noise on both normal-hearing and hearing-impaired persons. She is currently conducting research on classroom acoustics.

Lauren enjoys swing dancing, playing tennis, running, and attending art shows. She also loves architecture and acoustics and is always happy to share this with others. If you too are interested in acoustics or have any questions about ASA student life, please don’t hesitate to send her a quick email or talk to her at the next conference.

AA - Architectural Acoustics

Representative for Architectural Acoustics: Norman Philipp
Location: University of Kansas
E-mail: philipp.norman@gmail.com 



Norman is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Kansas.  He began his study in acoustics at the University of Kansas, obtaining a Bachelor's of Science in Architectural Engineering and Bachelor's of Architecture.  Embarking into the professinal consulting field, Norman worked at Yantis Acoustical Design (SPARLING) in Seattle, WA for 3 years, working on a variety of projects ranging from health care and education facilities to performance venues and museums.  Returning to academia, he completed a Master's of Science degree at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, researching modular classroom acoustics.

Norman enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, cooking, and attending stand-up comedy shows.  He actively works to help integrate architecture and acoustics in the built environment and is always happy to share this with others.  If you too are interested in architectural acoustics, please don't hesitate to send him a quick email or talk to him at the next conference.

AB - Animal Bioacoustics

Representative for Animal Bioacoustics: Mary Bates
Location: Brown University
E-mail: mary_bates@brown.edu



Mary is a graduate student in the Psychology program at Brown University in Providence, RI where she studies the auditory behavior of echolocating bats. Her current work includes experiments on acoustical interference, echo delay perception, and the roles of the vestibular system and spatial memory in flight. She joined the ASA Student Council at the Portland, OR meeting in May 2009. Some of her non-bat related interests include knitting, ceramics and traveling.

AO - Acoustical Oceanography

Representative for Acoustical Oceanography: James Traer
Location: University of California - San Diego
E-mail: jtraer@ucsd.edu



After graduating from high-school James spent some time as an unemployed beach bum until the money ran out and he had to go to college to get a student loan.  He spent his undergraduate years searching for a way back to his semi-aquatic lifestyle and after obtaining a degree in Physics from Cambridge University, and spending his masters with an MRI machine performing tomographic inversions to monitor blood flow in arteries he learned that oceanographers used acoustics to perform tomographic inversion on flowing fluids in the ocean.  He greatly exaggerated his expertise in the field to get a PhD at Scripps Oceanography and he's never looked back.

These days he spends a little time playing with adaptive array processing techniques, a little time tinkering with with seismo-acoustic data trying to understand the coupling between ocean surface waves and microseisms and a little time playing bass in San Diego Jam-rock band GuavaBelly (www.guavabelly.com) but most of the time he's a beach bum.

BB - Biomedical/Bioresponse

Representative for Biomedical/Bioresponse: Lucie Somaglino
Location: University Claude Bernard and INSERM U556, Lyon, France
E-mail: luliloue@yahoo.fr



Lucie is a PhD student at the INSERM U556 (Applications of the Ultrasonic sounds to the therapy) and the University Claude Bernard of Lyon, located in France. She’s working on the Ultrasonic part of a project for the “Development of novel sonosensitive liposomes for targeted ultrasound mediated drug delivery”. She’s a French student and the first non-American member of the student council. Lucie enjoys traveling, taking photos with her film (non-digital) camera, meeting people and learning new languages. She loves music, especially classical, flamenco and manouche guitar (She used to play classical guitar a lot before studying too much!)

EA - Engineering Acoustics

Representative for Engineering Acoustics: Scott Porter
Location: Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: scott.porter@psu.edu



Scott is a graduate student studying electroacoustic transduction in the Acoustics Program at Penn State. His research centers on the design and modeling of magnetostrictive sonar transducers. He completed his undergraduate work at Kettering University where he was
first introduced to acoustics and had the opportunity to participate in many acoustics-related projects and classes.

When he's not researching, Scott enjoys loudspeaker design, playing guitar, reading, and listening to music with his daughter Brooklyn. If you are interested in Engineering Acoustics, please feel free to send him an email and/or find him at the next meeting!

MU - Musical Acoustics

Representative for Musical Acoustics: Eric Dieckman
Location: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
E-mail: diecke@rpi.edu



Eric is a graduate student at RPI, pursuing a M.S./Ph.D. in architectural acoustics.  He received his undergraduate degree in physics at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri.  Since moving out to the East Coast (where the terrain is much more varied than in Missouri) Eric has spent a good deal of time hiking and backpacking.  In his spare time Eric also enjoys swing dancing, playing the cello and bass guitar, and scuba diving.

Eric is especially interested in undergraduate student involvement in the ASA.  If you are a student at any level interested in musical acoustics, please don't hesitate to contact him.

NS - Noise

Representative for Noise: Cole Duke
Location: Brigham Young University, Provo
E-mail: coleduke@gmail.com



Cole Duke is a graduate student in Physics at Brigham Young University. He has been doing research on active control of fan noise for about 4 years, and is currently working on broadband analog feedback control. He is also interested in DSP and architectural acoustics. In his free time, he enjoys cycling, listening to music, and reading with his son Alexander. 

PA - Physical Acoustics

Representative for Physical Acoustics: Jon LaFollett
Location: Washington State University in Pullman, WA
E-mail: la_follett@hotmail.com



Jon is currently a PhD student at Washington State University in Pullman, WA. He obtained B.S. degrees in Physics and Computational Physics from Oregon State University and an M.S. in Physics from Washington State University.

His research involves understanding various acoustic responses of metallic objects and how the presence of a boundary, such as the water-seabed boundary, can affect these responses. He is also interested in understanding how certain acoustic imaging methods, for example Synthetic Aperture Sonar, are affected by the presence of a boundary.

In his spare time, Jon enjoys: spending time with his wife and daughter; riding his dirt bike; and fixing things (cars, trucks, computers, motorcycles etc.). Jon enjoys underwater and physical acoustics and would be happy to discuss any topics related to these or graduate student life; don’t hesitate to contact him if you have any questions.

PP - Psychological & Physiological

Representative for Psychological & Physiological: Dorea Ruggles
Location: Boston University, Boston
E-mail: ruggles@bu.edu



Dorea is a graduate student at Boston University. Her interest in acoustics started as an undergrad studying physics and music at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. Since then, she has received an MS in architectural acoustics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and started a PhD in biomedical engineering at BU. Dorea's research deals with binaural speech intelligibility in complex environments.

Dorea spends her spare time playing French horn and running long distances (half and whole marathons). She also enjoys exploring Boston and taking advantage of all the art, history, music, and fun available there. Dorea loves all things related to sound, especially psychological and physiological acoustics, so don't hesitate email her with questions or even to just chat about acoustics.

SA - Structural Acoustics & Vibration

Representative for Structural Acoustics & Vibration: Logesh Kumar Natarajan
Location: Wayne State University, MI
E-mail: logeshjobs@yahoo.com

DJ Logike

Logesh is a graduate student in Mechanical Engineering at Wayne State University, MI. Hailing from India, he is an auto buff attracted by the Detroit auto scene!
He is currently researching on the interrelationship between sound and vibration in complex structures to develop a better diagnostic and prognostic tool for vibro-acoustic control. He also spares time for the outdoors, disc jockeying (DJ Logike), speaker design, Formula SAE vehicle design and practicing mindfulness. He loves to talk, so don't hesitate to talk to him.

SC - Speech Communication

Representative for Speech Communication: Christian Stilp
Location: University of Wisconsin, Madison
E-mail: cestilp@wisc.edu



Christian is a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, currently working on his Ph.D. in the Department of Psychology. His research investigates auditory perception of complex sounds (including speech) in adults and infants. He is currently working on his dissertation on efficient encoding of complex sounds from an information-theoretic perspective. In his free time, Christian enjoys baseball (go Brewers!), volleyball, biking, not being very good at several outdoor sports but still playing them, nearly all types of music, and a good beer.

Christian has been a member of the Acoustical Society since the Minneapolis, MN meeting in 2005, joining the Student Council at the New Orleans meeting in the Fall of 2007. If you have any questions about speech communication, fellowships, or which Sabermetric baseball statistics you really need to know, feel free to send him an email or catch him at the next ASA meeting.

SP - Signal Processing

Representative for Signal Processing: Colin Jemmott
Location: Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: cjemmott@gmail.com



Colin is a Ph.D. student who splits his time between the acoustics and
electrical engineering departments at Penn State. His current
research focuses on model-based sonar classification and passive
localization techniques.

Colin grew up in San Diego and spent his undergraduate years at Harvey
Mudd College in Los Angeles studying engineering, running a wind
tunnel and operating sound equipment for parties. His current hobbies
include working on the house, riding his motorcycle around central
Pennsylvania, maintaining his reef aquarium and brewing beer.

UW - Underwater Acoustics

Representative for Underwater Acoustics: Megan Ballard
Location: Pennsylvania State University
E-mail: megansue1181@yahoo.com



Megan is a graduate student in the Acoustics Program at Penn State, but she lives in sunny Austin, Texas. Megan enjoys opportunities to work with the people at the University of Texas at Austin while she finishes her degree from Penn State. Her research focuses on geoacoustic inversion and she spent three weeks at sea during the SW06 Experiment collecting data for her thesis. Megan became interested in acoustics while completing her undergraduate degree in Ocean Engineering at Florida Atlantic University where she took courses in underwater acoustics. Activities Megan enjoys are running, yoga, and reading.