As a corporate sponsor, Rockfon proudly supports the Robert Bradford Newman Student Award Fund and its operations. Medals and awards are offered by the fund for outstanding university student work in architectural acoustics and for professors who teach architectural acoustics. Its Student Design Competition is co-sponsored with the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Technical Committee on Architectural Acoustics (TCAA) and the National Council of Acoustical Consultants (NCAC). It also provides funding for students to attend ASA professional meetings.
Earlier this year, five student teams received prizes in 2018 for their meritorious design work juried and displayed at the ASA Student Design Competition. This year’s competition challenged participants to design a municipal building to house a court room, community hall and other support spaces. The program listed interior acoustics and internal/external noise control as areas of emphasis.
Yale University’s Ruoxi Jia, Wei-hsuan Wang and Jingqiu Zhang were recognized with first honors for their team’s design. Commendations were received by student design teams from the Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember in Indonesia, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of New York and two teams from Chalmers Institute of Technology of Sweden.
During the 2017-18 academic year, 10 students were awarded Newman Medals:
- Collin G. Abdallah, University of Oklahoma
- Elena Badino, Politecnico di Torino (Polytechnic University of Turin), Italy
- Laura C. Brill, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
- Martin S. Lawless, Pennsylvania State University
- Paul S. Mangelsdorf, University of Hartford, Connecticut
- Jacob J. Ott, University of Hartford, Connecticut
- Randall Rehfuss, Virginia Tech. School of Architecture + Design
- Aleksandra Rozynova, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Carl Ruegger, London South Bank University, United Kingdom
- Jamie Spary, London South Bank University, United Kingdom
The first Robert Bradford Newman Student Medals were awarded in 1986. In the years since, Newman Medals have been awarded to 333 students at more than 60 schools. Rockfon’s acoustical specialist, Gary Madaras, PhD, ASA, INCE, was awarded the Newman Medal in 1991.
