Page 53 - Summer 2006

National News
Elaine Moran
Acoustical Society of America Melville, New York 11747
During the 2006 Walter Munk Award Ceremony at the Ocean Sciences meeting in Honolulu, Dr. Peter Worcester (center) stands between two past recipients of the award — Dr. David Farmer (left) and Dr. Tom Rossby (right). Photo credit: Gail Scowcroft, URI.
Peter F. Worcester receives the 2006 Walter Munk Award
Peter F. Worcester was awarded the Walter Munk Award for Distinguished Research in Oceanography Related to Sound and the Sea at a ceremony held on February 24th during the 2006 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Honolulu, HI. Since 1978, Dr. Worcester has been a Research Oceanographer at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where his research interests center on the applica- tion of acoustic remote sensing tech- niques to the study of ocean structure and circulation.
The Walter Munk Award is grant- ed jointly by The Oceanography Society, the Office of Naval Research and the Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy. The award consists of a medal, a commemorative lapel pin, and a certificate bearing the signatures of the Chief of Naval Research and the President of The Oceanography Society. Recipients are selected based on their significant original contribu- tions to the understanding of physical ocean processes related to sound in the sea; significant original contributions to the application of acoustic methods to that understanding; and/or out- standing service that fosters research in
ocean science and instrumenta- tion contributing to the above.
Dr. Worce- ster received the award in recogni- tion of “his early and continuing contributions to the development of acoustical oceanography and tomographic inverse methods for acoustic meas- urement of ocean processes, for tire- less service aimed at developing a
responsible permitting structure for the use of sound in the sea for scientific pur- poses, and for leadership in the U.S. ocean acoustics community.”
Peter Worcester is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. He served as Chair of the ASA's Technical Committee on Acoustical Oceanography (2001-2004) and as co-editor, with Robert C. Spindel, of the special issue of JASA on The North Pacific Acoustical Laboratory published in March 2005 [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117 (3, Pt. 2) March 2005]. His arti- cle “Acoustic Remote Sensing of Ocean Gyres,” coauthored with Walter Munk and Robert Spindel, appeared in the premier issue of Acoustics Today (Vol. 1, Issue 1, October 2005, pp. 11-17).
Previous award recipients have been Walter Munk (1993), David M. Farmer (1994), Leonid M. Brekhovskikh (1996), Stephen A. Thorpe (1997), Robert Pinkel (1999), Robert C. Spindel (2001), and H. Thomas Rossby (2003).
Lisa Zurk receives Faculty Early Career Development Award
Portland State University Professor Lisa M. Zurk has received a five-year, $400,000 grant from the
National Science Foundation’s (NSF) CAREER Award program for her pro- posal, “Electromagnetic Scattering and Propagation in Random Media at Terahertz Frequencies.” The National Science Foundation's Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) pro- gram is the NSF’s most prestigious award, offering early career develop- ment support of “those teacher-schol- ars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organi- zation.” The NSF review panel rated Zurk’s proposal very highly, describ- ing it as “an excellent proposal that clearly articulates innovative con- cepts...the broader impact of the proj- ect is extremely significant.”
Lisa Zurk will use the grant fund- ing to explore properties of the tera- hertz (THz) spectrum with a specific application of THz spectroscopy to detection of explosives and to biomed- ical imaging. She plans to develop models for THz propagation and scat- tering through different and complex materials; the resulting models will be tested in conjunction with the University of Washington’s THz meas- urement facility.
Lisa Zurk founded and runs the Northwest Electromagnetics and Acoustics Research Lab (NEAR-Lab), which conducts research in the area of
Lisa Zurk
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