The 3rd International Conference on Ocean Acoustics (OA2012) had been successfully held in the Grand Hotel of Beijing, China from May 21 to 25, 2012.
OA2012 was co-organized by the Institute of Acoustics, Chinese Academy of Sciences(IACAS); State Key Laboratory of Acoustics, CAS; School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology and Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), University of Washington.
Nearly 100 delegates from eleven countries and regions (including China, the United States, Russia, Canada, Australia, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Taiwan China) attended the meeting.
As a succession meeting of the First and Second International Conferences on Shallow Water Acoustics, known by the acronyms SWAC’97 and SWAC’09, the breadth of OA2012 was intended to cover the broader interests of the international ocean acoustics communities and not be limited solely to the area of shallow-water acoustics.
Targeted topics for this 3rd international conference included: theoretical and computational acoustics; long-range acoustic propagation; acoustic effects of water-column variability; shallow-water waveguide acoustics; reverberation, boundary scattering and seabed properties; marine bioacoustics; ocean ambient noise; tomography and inverse methods and experimental techniques and signal processing.
More than eighty papers were received in OA2012. It is also worth noting that twenty of these papers focused on reviews of progress for the most recent decades, often three decades, for particular areas of research in ocean acoustics.
In the opening ceremony on May 21, Professor WANG Xiaomin, Director of IACAS, delivered a warmly opening address on behalf of the conference committees, the Acoustical Society of China and IACAS to welcome all the delegates.
And then, Dr. Frank Herr and Dr. Robert Headrick from the United States Office of Naval Research and Academician ZHANG Renhe from IACAS made their welcome speeches respectively.
During the opening ceremony, Professor ZHOU Jixun was awarded the certificate of honor by the United States Office of Naval Research for his prominent contributions in international cooperation of ocean acoustics between China and the United States.
In the following five days, delegates from twelve countries and regions introduced their recent research results.
All the delegates visited IACAS on May 23, 2012.
In the closing ceremony, Professor Jeffrey Simmen from APL and Professor LI Fenghua from IACAS gave the closing speeches respectively. They expressed their appreciation to the sponsors and organizers of OA2012 and hoped the 4th International Conference on Ocean Acoustics would be held in the future.
OA2012 had provided a unique and important opportunity to build new ties and relationships between participating scientists from various institutions. It will further promote communication and cooperation among researchers from different countries and regions.
OA2012 was sponsored by ONR Ocean Acoustics Program (USA), United States Office of Naval Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Acoustical Society of America, the Chinese Society of Oceanography and the Acoustical Society of China.
