2023 Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education
Scott D. Sommerfeldt has been named recipient of the Acoustical Society of America Rossing Prize in Acoustics Education. The Prize will be presented at the spring 2024 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) to be held in Ottawa, Canada.
Scott Sommerfeldt received B. Mus. Ed. and M.Sc. degrees from Brigham Young University and a Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University. He served as a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) since 1995 and is currently Retired Professor of Physics. His service also included Chair (2003-07) of the BYU Department of Physics and Astronomy and Dean (2007-17) of the BYU College of Physical and Mathematical Sciences.
His research interests include active and passive noise control, as well as energy-based acoustics. He is the author of over seventy peer reviewed journal publications and more than seventy conference proceedings papers and has also presented or been coauthor on twenty-four presentations on education topics at ASA meetings. In the field of active noise control, Scott has pioneered the use of acoustic energy density to attenuate enclosed sound fields, as well as a weighted sum of spatial gradients technique to attenuate the acoustic power radiated from vibrating structures. He has also been working on developing a method of using the radiation resistance matrix associated with a vibrating structure to determine the sound power radiated from the structure.
Scott Sommerfeldt has been an active member of the ASA’s Committee on Education in Acoustics since 1994. He served as an ASA Representative to American Institute of Physics (AIP) Liaison Committee on Education from 2002-2008 and as the ASA Representative to AIP Physics Resources Policy Committee from 2009-2012. He was the Advisor to the BYU Student Chapter of the ASA from 1996-2004 and 2020-2023. He developed new courses at BYU including a course covering active noise control and structural acoustics, as well as an advanced undergraduate course for science and engineering students covering the fundamentals of acoustics and noise control concepts.
Scott Sommerfeldt is a Fellow of the ASA and has held leadership positions in the Society including Vice President (2018-19), Member of the Executive Council (2009-12), Chair of the Technical Committee on Structural Acoustics and Vibration (2000-03) and the Technical Committee on Noise (2012-15). He has organized numerous special sessions at ASA meetings, and served as an Associate Editor for JASA Express Letters. He was also the General Chair and General Co-Chair for the ASA meetings in Salt Lake City in 2007 and 2016, respectively. In 2020 he was awarded the ASA Silver Medal in Noise.