ASA Silver Medal to Professor Roy

The Acoustical Society of America (ASA) will award its Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal to Ronald A. Roy, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Boston University. The award will be presented on 21 April 2010 at the ASA’s 159th meeting to be held in Baltimore, MD.

The Helmholtz-Rayleigh Medal is given annually to a member of the world acoustics community whose research overlaps at least two technical areas within the ASA.  Professor Roy’s medal is in recognition of outstanding contributions to research in physical acoustics and biomedical ultrasonics.

Trained as a physicist and an engineer, Prof. Roy specializes in the application of physical acoustics principles to problems in biomedical acoustics, acousto-optics, industrial ultrasonics, and acoustical oceanography — however, his true passion is the acoustics of bubbles and bubbly media.  Sonoluminescence (light from sound), acoustic cavitation dynamics, and bubble-mediated therapeutic ultrasonics are topics of past and current interest.  He received his BS in Engineering Physics from the University of Maine, an MS in Physics from the University of Mississippi, and an MPhil and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Yale university.  Before joining Boston University in 1996, Roy served on the technical staff at both the Applied Physics Laboratory of the University of Washington and the National Center for Physical Acoustics at the University of Mississippi.