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Young Persons' Award Young Persons’ Award for Innovation in Acoustical Engineering 2009 OPEN for entries
The Young Persons’ Award for Innovation in Acoustical Engineering 2009 is now open for entries from acousticians in the first 5 years of their career. Entries can be accepted until 12 noon on 31st May 2009. IAC, world-leading noise control company, continues to act as Corporate Sponsor of the Award. Brian Quarendon is IAC’s CEO and Group President: “We are keen to once again celebrate the contribution of young acoustical engineers across a huge range of British industry sectors. We have sponsored the Award since its inception in 2005 when we encouraged the Institute to launch the Award. Young people entering the industry are crucial in ensuring the sector’s longer term viability, and winners like Constantin are a great encouragement to others coming up through the ranks.” Entry forms can be downloaded from the Awards section of www.ioa.org.uk and by clicking here. Prizes for 2009 will include £500 and a weekend for two at a European destination, and a solid silver replica of the impressive trophy, and 2 runner up prizes – all prizes will be sponsored once again by IAC. Let’s look back at the 2007 winner and the developments for him since that time. “As an academic it’s really important to get industry recognition for your inventions and developments.” Dr Constantin Coussios, Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford – winner of the Young Persons’ Award for Innovation in Acoustical Engineering 2007 – sponsored by IAC Limited. It has been an action-packed year for young Dr Constantin-C Coussios MIOA who took first prize in the 2007 Young Persons’ Award for Innovation in Acoustical Engineering. Constantin is a researcher at the Department of Engineering Science within the Oxford Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Oxford. His cancer therapy-enhancing technology uses high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) to reduce heat damage of good cells lying around a tumour being treated. His innovation has been attracting a great deal of international attention over the past year. Recent NHS funding has allowed the commencement of clinical trials this month, to test the development on real patients. It will be a year before results are available, but Constantin hopes that patents will result from the work, and so lay the foundation for commercial application in the future. Since winning the Award, Constantin has become a father and in May he and his wife Niki took their 6-month-old son on their winning weekend in Barcelona, generously provided by The winning weekend
“We were delighted to be able to take our weekend trip in May, having had to put it off a number of times – small baby reasons. Our thanks to Colette at IAC for changing the dates several times and for choosing the Regina hotel in Barcelona which was a spot on location for us – right in the middle of things.
Later on we were treated to a first-class dinner at Casa Calvet Restaurant – thanks again to IAC. Casa Calvet is in a stunning building created for a textile manufacturer by Gaudi. It was a marvellous evening – the food, the ambiance – and other than our dear screaming baby – was such a romantic occasion!
“I was thrilled to be able to take my family away to such a lovely location for a few days. It was a great prize and we really made the most of it.”
Reader of Oxford University
Look out for more from Constantin and his encouragement to our younger members to enter the Young Persons’ Award in the forthcoming issues of Acoustics Bulletin.
The Institute of Acoustics’ ‘Young Persons' Award for Innovation in Acoustical Engineering 2007’ - sponsored by IAC Limited The winner of this year’s award is brilliant young acoustics researcher Dr Constantin Coussios of Oxford University. More
This biennial Award was offered for the first time in 2005. As a leading company in the noise control both here in the UK and globally, IAC is pleased to continue to sponsor this Award since its inception. We sponsored the design and manufacture of the solid millennium silver trophy – by Alfred Pain of Leathermarket in London, and also the small replicas for the winners. We have also sponsored the prizes for the winners and runners up on each occasion. We are pleased to support the IOA in this, and are keen to encourage young people in their acoustics careers, and highlight to a wide audience the satisfaction that a career in the sector can bring. The Award will next be offered in 2009 and entries will be invited from March 2009.
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Here is Constantin’s account.
“We had a wonderful dinner on the Friday evening on the Plaza Real and strolled through the old city and awoke on Saturday to sunshine and blue skies. It was my wife’s, and of course, Dimitri’s, first visit to Barcelona so we walked Las Ramblas in the morning and saw various stunning landmarks by Catalan’s architectural genius Antoni Gaudi, including the Sagrada Familia church. We made it uphill – just about - with the pram to the Park Guell by early evening – it gives a fabulous view out over the city. 
“The next day we took in the sights including the Palau de la Música Catalana and the Santa Eulalia Cathedral in the old town, and then we went to the Zoo. Dimitri was most impressed by the size of the giraffes! We eked out every last minute and left it rather late to find a taxi and made it to the airport by the skin of our teeth. 
Immediate Past President of the Institute of Acoustics, Colin English said: “We are delighted that Constantin enjoyed the weekend part of his prize and are most grateful for him donating his £500 cash prize provided by IAC, back to us. This will be awarded for the best paper presented by a young medical acoustician in our Spring 2009 conference.”
Around the same time as the Award ceremony last autumn, the BBC carried a piece on Constantin’s invention on the BBC Science website which brought a flood of journalists’ enquiries. Constantin has since been made a Reader of Oxford University which is a huge honour, especially at such a young age. This ‘recognition of distinction’ is for contributions to science that are of benefit to mankind. Congratulations from all at IAC on this excellent achievement. 
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