JANUARY 23, 2008 —Sarah McGuire, a graduate student from the Purdue School of Mechanical Engineering who is working on PARTNER’s Project 2, Quantifying and Mitigating the Impact of Noise on People, has been named a Department of Transportation/Federal Aviation Administration Transport Centers of Excellence 2007 Student of the Year.
In nominating McGuire for the recognition, PARTNER director Ian Waitz cited her “standout contributions” to Project 2, noting that “aircraft noise impacts are recognized as one of the most significant potential constraints on aviation growth.” Project lead investigator Dr. Patricia Davies, director of Purdue’s Herrick Laboratories, wrote that McGuire “demonstrates leadership in her research because she takes the initiative in the investigations.”
The awards are annually presented by the CoE's at the recommendation of the individual centers, of which PARTNER is one. Recipient selection is based on technical merit and research, academic performance, and professionalism and leadership.
PARTNER’s nomination of Sarah notes she “has made significant advances because of her work ethic, tenaciousness, and her ability to produce high quality work with little supervision.”
McGuire, who is in Purdue's Direct to Ph.D.Program, is researching how aircraft noise exposure community response models can be validated by using existing survey data, and to determine if newer loudness models can be used to improve predictions of community response to transportation noise. She has developed strategies to “fill-in” missing data and based on her experiences she has come up with draft recommendations for the structure of a survey database. McGuire has also investigated several sleep disturbance models and examined differences in responses to aircraft, road and rail noise. She has developed an algorithm to make sound sources less identifiable while retaining the temporal characteristics of the sound; this will be used to generate stimuli to determine whether transportation source knowledge impacts people’s responses.
McGuire will receive the award, which includes a check for $1,000, at the March 2008 PARTNER advisory board meeting in Ottawa where she will make a presentation on her research.
McGuire graduated from Northern Illinois University, with a 4.0 GPA in May 2006 and joined Purdue’s School of Mechanical Engineering in August 2006 as a Masters student. She has completed three semesters at Purdue with a 4.0 GPA and was accepted into the Direct to Ph.D. Program in June 2007.
Sarah McGuire, a student in Purdue School of Mechanical Engineering's Direct to Ph.D. Program and working on PARTNER Project 2, is a Department of Transportation/Federal Aviation Administration Transport Centers of Excellence 2007 Student of the Year. |
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