All’s Quiet

For the fourth time in five years, UTA students have won a noise control engineering national award.

Ross Everett and Bret Johnson, mechanical engineering students who graduated in May 2023, earned the Leo Beranek Student Medal for Excellence in the Study of Noise Control from the Institute of Noise Control Engineering of the USA for their work to decrease cabin noise in the autonomous rideshare cars owned by May Mobility that operate around UTA’s campus. The institute awards the medal annually to outstanding undergraduate and graduate students at North American colleges and universities that have courses for noise control engineering.

“We’re proud and happy to earn this award and to have been part of a team of people who made it possible,” Johnson says. “It really makes the hours feel worth it, and there’s a sense of accomplishment that comes from being recognized not just by our peers and the University, but also by people with no connection to us or our project.”

The duo and their senior design team—Nicholas McDonald, Amir Yonan, Fernando Alejandre and Grant Roney—worked with May Mobility to reduce loud noise from a computer fan mounted in the front passenger seat area of May Mobility’s vehicles, which created an unpleasant environment for riders. The team also published a paper, Soundproofing Autonomous Vehicle Computers for Passenger Comfort, in the Proceedings of the National Conference on Noise Control Engineering.