ASA PRESSROOM

Acoustical Society of America
143rd Meeting Special Events

[ SESSIONS | LECTURES | COURSES | SOCIALS | TOURS | PERFORMANCES ]


SPECIAL SESSIONS


ASA PLENARY SESSION


A plenary session will be held Wednesday afternoon at 3:15 p.m. in Grand Ballroom 1. Gold Medals will be presented to Robert E. Apfel and Tony F.W. Embleton, the Silver Medal in Psychological and Physiological Acoustics will be presented to Neal F. Viemeister and the R. Bruce Lindsay Award will be presented to James J. Finneran and Thomas J. Royston. The Medwin Prize in Acoustical Oceanography will be presented to Bruce Cornuelle.


Certificates will be presented to the Fellows elected at the Fort Lauderdale meeting of the Society.


HOT TOPICS SESSION


On Wednesday afternoon, 5 June, a Hot Topics session (3pID) will be held in Grand Ballroom 3 at 2:00 p.m. and ending just before the start of the Plenary Session. Papers will be presented on current topics in the fields of Signal Processing in Acoustics, Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, and Engineering Acoustics.

SPECIAL LECTURES


SPECIAL HISTORY LECTURES


The Committee on Archives and History will jointly sponsor two special lectures on the history of acoustics with the Technical Committees on Signal Processing in Acoustics and Structural Acoustics and Vibration. The "History of Signal Processing in Acoustics" will be presented by David I. Havelock on Tuesday, 4 June, at 11:00 a.m. in the Benedum Room. The "History of Structural Acoustics and Vibration" will be presented by David Feit, Murray Strasberg and Eric E. Ungar on Wednesday, 5 June, at 10:55 a.m. in Kings Garden North Room.


In 1997, the ASA Committee on Archives and History conceived a plan for a series of invited lectures on each of the technical areas of the Society which would document the significant achievements and milestones of each of its thirteen technical committees during the Society's first 75 years. With the cooperation of the technical committees, distinguished individuals are selected to review the history of their particular technical specialty and present a lecture which shows how that activity has developed and has contributed to the Society at large and to the broad field of acoustics as well.

The invited lecturers have been asked to prepare a written manuscript of their lectures which will be published in a commemorative book for the 75th Anniversary of the Society to be celebrated in 2004. The Archives and History Committee and the individual technical committees/group welcome comments and suggestions on both the History Lecture Series and on the proposed ASA Diamond Anniversary Book. Volunteers to assist the committees would be most welcome too. Contact Henry Bass, Chair, Committee on Archives and History, pabass@sunset.backbone.olemiss.edu


TUTORIAL LECTURE


A tutorial lecture titled "Keep Your Ear on the Ball: Display of Targets in the Bat's Sonar Receiver," will be presented by James A. Simmons of Brown University on Monday, 3 June, at 7:00 p.m. in Kings Garden South and LeBateau Rooms. This is the thirty-first in a series of Tutorial Lectures intended to provide attendees with some understanding and appreciation of areas of acoustical research other than their own specialties. A registration fee of $25 is charged to defray partially the lecture expenses. Students with current IDs may register for $12. Only those who have pre-registered in advance of the meeting are assured of receiving copies of the lecture notes at the meeting. Use the registration form to register for the tutorial.


MEDWIN PRIZE IN ACOUSTICAL OCEANOGRAPHY AND ACOUSTICAL OCEANOGRAPHY PRIZE LECTURE


The 2002 Medwin Prize in Acoustical Oceanography will be awarded to Bruce D. Cornuelle at the Plenary Session on Wednesday, 6 June. The award citation reads: "for the effective use of sound in the discovery and understanding of physical and biological parameters and processes in the sea."


Bruce Cornuelle will present the Acoustical Oceanography Prize Lecture titled "Ocean tomography, inverse methods, and broadband ocean acoustics" on Wednesday, 6 June, at 1:00 a.m. in Session 3pAO in Grand Ballroom 3.

SPECIAL COURSES



SHORT COURSE ON CONVERSATIONAL SYSTEMS


A short course on conversational systems will be held Sunday, 2 June, 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Monday, 3 June, 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at Carnegie Mellon University. Bus transportation between the Pittsburgh Hilton and Carnegie Mellon University will be provided.


This short course will describe, discuss, and demonstrate the aspects of speech and language technology used to develop conversational systems which combine the technologies of speech recognition, speech synthesis, and language and domain modeling to develop systems in which users and machines interact using voice to access information or perform useful tasks. The course will be directed toward technically-literate researchers and students who are not necessarily experienced in speech science and language technologies. The course will include overviews and technical commentary on both the fundamentals and contemporary issues underlying automatic speech recognition, speech synthesis, language modeling and semantic inference, and the design of spoken-language systems, including user interface issues. Technical discussions will be supplemented with demonstrations and discussions of the development of spoken language systems using tools and resources that are available to the public in open source form.


The course will be taught by Alan W. Black, Ronald Rosenfeld, Alexander I. Rudnicky, and Richard M. Stern, who are all faculty members of the speech group at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Alan Black is well known for his work in speech synthesis, including the development of the Festival Speech Synthesis system while at the University of Edinburgh. Alexander Rudnicky's research has focussed on speech recognition, interfaces, and language, and he has led the effort to develop the CMU Communicator system, a dialog management architecture for complex spoken language tasks. Roni Rosenfeld has extensive experience in language modeling for speech recognition and accessible and natural flexible interfaces for spoken language systems, and he is leading the development of the Universal Speech Interface. Richard Stern has extensive experience in signal processing, speech recognition, and auditory perception, and he directs the activities of the CMU Robust Speech Group.


The registration fee is $250.00 and covers attendance, instructional materials and coffee breaks. Only those who have preregistered by 6 May will be guaranteed receipt of instructional materials. Any cancellation after 6 May will be charged a $50 processing fee. At-meeting registration will not be possible since the course will be held at Carnegie Mellon University prior to the start of the ASA meeting at the Pittsburgh Hilton.


Use the registration form to register for the short course.

SPECIAL SOCIALS



BUFFET SOCIALS


A complimentary buffet social with cash bar will be held from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening in the Grand Ballroom #1 at the Pittsburgh Hilton.


Thursday night's social will be held on a river boat. The river boat will be available for boarding at 5:30 p.m. with departure at 6:00 p.m. from the Point State Park located directly in front of the Hilton (there will be a short walk from the Hilton to the boat). The cruise of the three rivers (Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio) will provide an excellent view of Pittsburgh and surroundings, such as Mt. Washington. The boat will return to Point State Park at 7:30 p.m. in time for you to return to the Hilton to attend the Technical Committee meetings.


Meeting registration badges are required for admission.

SPECIAL TOURS



There are three technical tours: 1) Heinz Hall and Benedum Center, 2) Heinz Stadium and PNC Park, and 3) MSHA and NIOSH. You must register in advance so that tours and bus transportation can be arranged. You may register for these tours via the ASA Web site for the Pittsburgh meeting. The music halls and the stadiums are within walking distance of the Hilton, so you may walk or register for bus transportation when you register for the tour. The MSHA/NOISH tour will require bus transportation.


HEINZ HALL AND BENEDUM CENTER



Wednesday from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Heinz Hall is home to the Pittsburgh Symphony and an elegantly restored concert hall. Scott Pfeiffer, acoustical consultant for the recent renovations, will lead the tour of Heinz Hall. Benedum Center is a restored 2885-seat theater, which is used for opera, theater and dance.


HEINZ STADIUM and PNC Park



Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Heinz Stadium is home to the Steelers football team and PNC Park is home to the Pirates baseball team. The Pirates will be playing in Pittsburgh on Friday, 7 June. The tours will emphasize the sound systems. A bus will shuttle tour registrants between the two stadiums to save time. An optional box lunch will likely be available on the shuttle for those who preregister.


MSHA/NIOSH


Tuesday from 9:00 to 12:00 a.m. This includes a bus trip to nearby Mine Safety and Health Administration, and National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health. The tours will emphasize noise control and hearing protection programs, demonstrations and research involved in coal mining.

SPECIAL PERFORMANCES



CONCERT PERFORMANCE TECHNICAL SESSIONS


A concert performance technical session will be held in conjunction with the special session on free reed instruments on Tuesday, 4 June, at 5:00 p.m. in Grand Ballroom 3. The performance will feature classical accordionist Henry Doktorski and harmonica virtuoso Howard Levy.

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