Congratulations to Dr. Sanjay Kumar, Sam Underwood, and Dr. Lily Wang for recently publishing an open access article ‘Ten questions concerning smart and healthy built environments for older adults‘ in Building and Environment, with several other authors who participated in the Durham School’s Future of the Building Industry (FoBI) Workshop focused on opportunities for an aging population in May 2022. The 2024 FoBI conference will again focus on this topic in May 2024.
Dr. Lily Wang has had the honor of presenting three keynote lectures at conferences in one year! The latest was at Healthy Building 2023 Europe on “Links Between Indoor Acoustic Conditions and Human Well-Being and Performance”, 11-14 June 2023. Many thanks to Dr. Janina Fels (conference co-chair) for inviting Dr. Wang to present. Dr. Fels is succeeding Dr. Michael Vorlander as director of RTWH-Aachen’s Institute for Hearing Technology and Acoustics.
Dr. Lily Wang has been selected as one of SWE Magazine’s “Women Engineers You Should Know.” The article appears in the magazine’s Spring 2023 issue. Since 2015, the magazine has conferred this honor to women engineers who were nominated by members of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE).
Congratulations to PhD student Sam Underwood! He has been selected to receive the 2023 Martin Hirschorn IAC Prize – Graduate Student Project Award for the project “Predicting noise in restaurants via hybrid simulation“, awarded by the Institute of Noise Control Engineering! This spring Sam has also been selected to receive the 2023 Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant award from the UNL College of Engineering, and two 2023 awards (the Dean’s Award and Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant) from the UNL Office of Graduate Studies. We are tremendously proud of Sam’s achievements!
The 2023 NAG End-of-the-Year Party started with a visit to the Candle House in Aksarben, where each person got to mix their own scent into a candle. After that, we went to nearby restaurant Saffron Urban Indian Kitchen for a celebratory dinner. Visiting colleagues Fernanda Caldas (PhD student) and Dr. Bruno Masiero from the University of Campinas in Brazil joined us. A number of students received their degrees in May and August 2023: Joey Hagge (MAE ’23), Joshua Palakapilly (MAE ’23), Blake Krapfl (MS ’23), Kenton Hummel (PhD ’23) and Brian Puckett (PhD ’23). Congratulations to them all!
Finally, the Acoustical Society of America convened in Chicago, IL (8-12 May 2023), after having the spring 2020 meeting that was originally planned there canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic! Sam Underwood and Gabriel Weeldreyer received NCAC Student Travel Awards to present papers, as did Dr. Lily Wang’s collaborators from the University of Campinas in Brazil (PhD student Fernanda Caldas, advised by Dr. Bruno Masiero). Congratulations to Sam for receiving second place in the Best Paper Awards for the Technical Committee on Architectural Acoustics for his paper “Flanking Paths: Finding them, Solving Them and Improvement in ASTC When You Do”! Board Game Night was again co-hosted by Dr. Lily Wang and Dr. Andrew Barnard from Penn State; featured games included Herd Mentality, Trial by Trolley, Wits and Wagers Las Vegas style, and Linkee. It’s always great to connect with NAG alums from years past (photo below includes 6 alums)! See more photos at this link.
Omaha’s newest performing arts venue is the Steelhouse Omaha, which opened on 12 May 2023. A few weeks before that, the acoustical consultant on the project Threshold Acoustics invited Nebraska Acoustics Group members to join them in making acoustic measurements at the facility. The space is designed for amplified performances, and the acoustics are very impressive – as a listener, you hear and feel the amazing energy from the huge speaker arrays, but you can also have a conversation with your fellow concert-goers! Many thanks to our friends at Threshold for giving us this opportunity!
In honor of Jun Kaneko receiving the Dick and Mary Holland Leadership Award, the Omaha Symphony has commissioned a work by percussionist and composer Andy Akiho, which premiered the weekend of 17 March 2023. Nebraska Acoustics Group members were invited to a session with Andy Akiho and Jun Kaneko at Kaneko Studios, where Mr. Akiho discussed his creative process among Jun Kaneko’s sculptures. Faculty and students from the UNO Music Department also participated in this special evening event. Dr. Lily Wang had a chance to attend the performance at the Holland Performing Arts Center – it was stupendous!
On 6 February 2023, Dr. Lily Wang presented two talks at the ASHRAE Winter 2023 Meeting in Atlanta for Seminar 36 ‘The Interaction of Indoor Environmental Quality Variables in Schools: Health and Performance Impacts’. One gave an overview of the results from an EPA-sponsored research project “Healthy K-12 Schools: Correlations from a Cumulative Model That Includes Acoustic, Lighting, Indoor Air Quality, and Thermal Comfort Conditions and Student Achievement”, while the other focused on “Correlations between Measured Indoor Air Quality and Thermal Comfort Conditions and Student Achievement”. Recordings of the two presentations may be found at this weblink.
The annual Nebraska Acoustics Group Winter Party was held on 13 December 2022. The party featured catering from Wheatfield; rounds of the game ‘Roll and Write to 100‘ (to determine the order of opening gifts); and our traditional ‘white elephant’ gift exchange. Looking forward to a great year ahead in 2023!