Professor Michael Vorländer, Head of the Institute of Technical Acoustics at the RWTH Aachen University is this year’s winner of the Institute of Acoustics’ prestigious R W B Stephens Medal.

The medal was presented to Professor Vorländer by Dr Tony Jones, President of the Institute of Acoustics, at its recent Spring Conference on Building Acoustics. The award recognises the Professor’s outstanding contributions to teaching and research, as well as his leadership in acoustics.

Prof Vorländer’s contributions include detailed investigations into room acoustical ray tracing models, maximum-length sequence reciprocity calibration of microphones in reverberation chambers, and the definition and measurement of random incident scattering coefficients. His drive and enthusiasm in promoting acoustics throughout Europe contributes towards making him a worthy winner of the award. He is currently President of the European Acoustics Association.

Acknowledging those that had helped him in his work, Professor Vorländer said “I am thankful for receiving such a high honour. I feel very proud because Dr. Stephens was such an example for me. He was very active in various fields of acoustics, and was an advocate of interdisciplinary and international co-operation. Like me, he also shared an enthusiasm for football. Furthermore, I would like to express that this award is deserved by the whole team at ITA Aachen, not by me as an individual scientist”.

Following receipt of his award, Professor Vorländer gave an entertaining and visual lecture entitled “Buildings – How They Sound”, to an appreciative audience, on the technique of auralisation, well known in room acoustics but actually used extensively in assessing airborne and impact sound transmission in buildings. Using knowledge of the characteristics of sound generation, transmission, radiation and reproduction, the auralisation technique offers a possible means of deriving more meaningful descriptors of acoustic comfort in buildings through systematic listening tests and psychoacoustic analysis. During his lecture, Professor Vorländer demonstrated the effectiveness of auralisation with very realistic simulations produced by the modelling processes he had described.

The R W B Stephens Medal was named after Dr Ray Stephens, the first President of the Institute. His main interests lay in physical acoustics but he is remembered by generations of students for his continuing work in education. The medal is awarded in odd numbered years for outstanding contributions to acoustics research or education.

ENDS

Get Brochure Download or Request Institute of Acoustics Brochure

© 1974-2009, Institute of Acoustics