Dr. Marehalli G. Prasad, professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology, has been elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America due to his many contributions to the acoustics of ducts and mufflers. The announcement of his election and the presentation of his Fellowship certificate will be made at the plenary session of the 152 nd meeting of the Society to be held on November 30, 2006 in Honolulu , HI . This meeting is jointly organized with the Acoustical Society of Japan. The Acoustical Society of America, which was founded in 1929, is the premier international society diffusing knowledge in diverse areas acoustics; from both theoretical and experimental research.

“I am very happy to receive this fellowship as the experts in this specialized area have recognized my research and contributions as a further understanding in the important area “acoustics of ducts;” it has several applications such as mufflers, HVAC, flow piping, etc. This also recognizes Stevens and our Mechanical Engineering Department as a place where important work in this area of duct acoustics, in particular, and acoustics, in general, is being carried out,” said Prasad.

Prasad has been a faculty member at Stevens since 1980 and built the Noise and Vibration Control Laboratory consisting of anechoic and reverberation chambers in 1984, under a technical gift program of IBM Corporation, Poughkeepsie . His research areas include duct acoustics, mufflers, acoustic intensity, boundary element method, vibrations and musical acoustics, and engineering education. His work in acoustical source characterization approaches such as direct engine impedance measurement, four-load method, modified transfer function methods, and modeling of engine-muffler systems, which received in award in 1983 at the International Acoustical Paper awards program of Nelson Industries, is extremely well known. Prasad’s research work has received support form IBM Corporation, Exxon Research, Daewoo, UNIDO, NSF and other companies as well.

Prasad’s research contributions have been published in several refereed international journals and have been included in several acoustics books by other authors. He has presented several invited lectures at Nelson Industries, Wisconsin; Nova-Husky Research Corporation, Calgary; Carrier Corporation, Syracuse; and at a research symposium of International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He has presented invited papers at the meetings of Acoustical Society of America, Institute of Noise Control Engineering , American Society of Mechanical Engineers and American Society of Engineering Education.