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Women in Acoustics Honorees
gram manager for the University Research Initiatives (URI) at the ONR in Arlington, VA.
Ellen leads with confidence and poise. She has supported women by providing a strong leadership role model and serving as ASA WIA Committee Chair (1998-1999). El- len has also served the underwater acoustics community in other ways. She ensured that outstanding early-career per- formers were identified and nominated for the Young Inves- tigator Program (YIP) and Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). She provided merit- based proposal selection and funding in underwater acous- tics research, resulting in an increased number of talented women in the program. She was a member of the NATO Scientific Committee of National Representatives in La Spe- zia, Italy (2005-2009). She was a visiting scientist in the De- partment of Ocean Engineering at MIT (1992-1993) and is a senior member of the IEEE Oceanic Engineering Society.
Fall 2015 Honoree Judy R. Dubno
Judy R. Dubno is a professor and director of the Hearing Research Program in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina. Judy earned her PhD from the City University of New York Graduate Center and completed a post-
doctoral fellowship at the UCLA School of Medicine. She is a prolific researcher, conducting NIH-supported research focused on human auditory function, with emphasis on the processing of auditory information and the recognition of speech and how these abilities change in adverse listening conditions, with age, and with hearing loss.
She has served as an associate editor and reviewer for JASA and at least 10 other scientific journals. Among her many awards are the James Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology from the American Academy of Audiology and the Carhart Memorial Lecture from the American Auditory Society.
Judy has served on the ASA Executive Council (2004-2007) and as vice president (2010-2011) and president (2014-2015) of the Society. She is also an ASA Fellow. During her years of service to the ASA, she was integrally involved in strategic planning, innovation, and vision mapping for the Society. She has been a strong advocate for women in acoustics and educational outreach missions to ensure a vibrant future for ASA. The ASA School, developed under her shared lead- ership, recently completed its third session in 2016 and is in the planning stages for the ASA School 2018. The ASA
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School is an event where graduate students and early-career acousticians in all areas of acoustics learn and discuss a wide variety of topics related to interdisciplinary acoustical themes while providing opportunities for meeting faculty and fellow students, developing collaborations and profes- sional relationships within acoustics, and mentoring. Judy exhibits exemplary leadership and scholarship, and she is extremely thoughtful and generous in her personal mentor- ship to members of the Society.
Spring 2016 Honoree Donna Neff
Donna Neff is currently professor emer- ita, retiring in 2014 after nearly 30 years as a researcher at the Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH) in Omaha, NE. Stationed near Omaha while serving in the US Air Force, she obtained a BS and MA in psychology from the University of
Nebraska at Omaha in the late 1970s. During that time, the BTNRH was built, and Donna was hired as one of the first re- search assistants while completing her PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1983). After a postdoctoral fellowship in the Laboratory of Psycho- physics at Harvard University in Boston, she returned to the BTNRH as a staff scientist and lab head in psychoacoustics, combining science with raising three children through some flexible scheduling and not much sleep. Donna’s research has made important contributions to our understanding of the difficulties both adults and children can have in com- plex listening environments, especially those that are unpre- dictable. Her work on the effects of signal uncertainty was groundbreaking at the time and continues to be a focus of current psychoacoustics research.
Donna was named an ASA Fellow in 1996 and has served the ASA in many capacities. In 1996, she was elected as the first woman chair of the Psychological and Physiologi- cal Acoustics (P&P) Technical Committee. Over the years, she has also served on the WIA Committee; the Member- ship Committee for P&P; Rules and Governance; standards working groups; subcommittees on membership, societal growth, and improving meetings; and a vision task force and chaired the Committee on Innovation. Donna was elected to the Executive Council (2000-2003) and served as vice presi- dent (2005-2006).
Donna has been a role model for women students and ear- ly career acousticians. In retirement, one of her projects is working on her pilot’s license for sailplanes, where once again she is the only woman among a large group of men.