Architectural engineering grad student wins NSF postdoctoral fellowship

Jonathan Rathsam, a University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate student in architectural engineering, has been named one of approximately 35 postdoctoral fellows for 2008-09 with the National Science Foundation's International Research Fellowship Program.

"This is a very competitive grant achievement," said his adviser, Lily Wang, associate professor of architectural engineering with the college's Durham School in Omaha.

The objective of the International Research Fellowship Program is to introduce scientists and engineers in the early stages of their careers to international collaborative research opportunities, thereby furthering their research capacity and global perspective and forging long-term relationships with scientists, technologists and engineers abroad. These awards are available in any field of science and engineering research and education supported by NSF.

Rathsam, a native of San Diego who earned his bachelor's degree at Grinnell College in Iowa, will use the fellowship to work with Boaz Rafaely at Ben-Gurion University in Beer-Sheva, Israel, on a project titled "In situ measurement of acoustical absorption using a spherical microphone array."

This will not be the first time Rathsam has traveled outside the United States to conduct research. During his doctoral studies at UNL, he has had opportunities to study with the Acoustics Group at the Technical University of Denmark, and with the Institute of Technical Acoustics at Germany's RWTH Aachen University.

Awards Rathsam has earned at UNL include a student best paper for his presentation, "Spatial coverage of reflector panels predicted with and without edge diffraction" at the November 2006 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, and the 2005 Martin Hirschorn IAC prize from the Institute of Noise Control Engineering.