Dr. Micah Downing is a principal and founding member of BRRC where his research focuses on aircraft noise and sonic boom modeling, measurement, and assessment of their effects on people and the environment. Dr. Downing held previous positions at the Air Force Research Laboratory and Wyle Laboratories, Inc. Throughout his career, he has directed more than 40 field measurement projects for the USAF, USN, USA, NATO, and NPS. He has also led the acoustical analysis for over 15 major environmental impact studies for the DoD as well as numerous noise studies supporting Environmental Assessments and DOD’s Air Installation and Range Compatible Use Zone studies. Dr. Downing received his B.S. in Physics from Davidson College, his M.S. in Aeronautics from the Joint Institute for the Advancement of Flight Sciences at NASA Langley, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Michael James is a principal and founding member of BRRC where he conducts applied research and consulting studies on high-amplitude noise sources and their effects on communities and the environment. He has co-authored over 150 technical papers and reports focusing on the development of innovative measurement, analysis, and modeling techniques to characterize and map the noise emitted from jet and rocket engines/motors. Mr. James has performed over 65 large-scale sound and vibration measurements for military and civilian aviation, rockets, weaponry, and blast noise. Before founding BRRC, he worked at Wyle Laboratories, Inc. Mr. James received his M.S. at Virginia Tech’s Vibration and Acoustic Laboratory where he researched turbofan engine-noise reduction and control technologies for the NASA Langley Acoustics Research Group.

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Josh Mellon joined BRRC in 2010 and is responsible for munitions and aircraft noise modeling, financial management and analysis, and contract formation and negotiation. Projects include jet, siren, and shipyard noise measurements as well as grant acquisition and noise mitigation analysis. Prior to joining BRRC, Mr. Mellon gained three years of management experience at ViewPlus, where he won and managed four grants and developed financial evaluation tools. He also taught undergraduate physics labs for five years, and acquired research experience through internships at NASA, SRI International, and SETI. Mr. Mellon served in Kuwait as an Army Sergeant, and received his B.S. in Physics and his M.S. in Applied Physics with an emphasis in Business from Oregon State University.

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Juliet Page is a principal engineer at BRRC conducting and directing research and consulting on transportation noise including sonic boom analysis, measurement, modeling, and dose-response test design and execution. She has led the development of acoustic software including PCBoom and the Advanced Acoustic Model (AAM), formerly the Rotorcraft Noise Model (RNM), which were recently expanded to include 1/12 octave band and time varying loudness metrics to facilitate research of advanced and urban air mobility vehicles. Juliet has led acoustic analysis of helicopter noise abatement procedure development and the creation of several FAA approved helicopter pilot Fly Neighborly training programs in live and perpetual eLearning formats. Ms. Page received her M.S. in Aerospace Engineering focusing on sonic boom modeling from the University of Southern California, a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Boston University and has had several years of graduate level rotorcraft acoustics courses from the University of Maryland.

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Dr. Shane Lympany is responsible for a variety of applied research and consulting projects focusing on noise and emissions modeling. He is currently developing models for ambient soundscapes, rocket emissions, long-range acoustic propagation, and cumulative sonic booms. His wide range of experience includes experimental aeroacoustics, high-fidelity fluid dynamics simulations, machine learning, and GIS data analysis. Prior to joining BRRC, Dr. Lympany gained research and development experience at Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, LORD Corporation, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. Dr. Lympany received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. For his doctoral research, he was awarded a prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to investigate the acoustic damping mechanisms of half-wave resonators in a rocket engine environment.

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Alexandria Salton is responsible for applied research and consulting projects focusing on the measurement, analysis, and modeling of jet and rocket noise. Ms. Salton has been instrumental in the research, design, and development of RUMBLE, used to perform propulsion noise and emissions analysis for commercial space environmental studies. She has authored over twenty-five rocket noise environmental studies to evaluate the potential impacts of noise and sonic booms. Ms. Salton’s field experience includes the measurement of the Falcon Heavy, Falcon 9, Delta IV Heavy, and Antares 230 rockets, as well as the F-35 and F/A-18 military jets. She also leads GIS-based processing and analysis efforts to develop in-house graphical tools. Ms. Salton received her B.A. in Mathematics from Bates College and her M.S. in Acoustics from The Pennsylvania State University’s, where she researched the feasibility of measuring the acoustic pressure of a pipe’s internal fluid using externally mounted accelerometers.

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Ben Manning’s responsibilities encompass a broad range of acoustical consulting services. He supports all facets of civil and military aviation consulting projects, including computer modeling and programming, noise measurements, data analysis, and technical writing. His experience includes military aircraft noise (DoD AICUZ studies), NEPA documentation, airspace noise, civil FAR Part 150 studies, and acoustic research and experimentation. Mr. Manning has expert knowledge of aviation noise models. He has contributed to studies and research programs that assess noise, emissions, fuel burn, and operational impacts to airports and the national airspace system. Mr. Manning received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Duke University, where he researched boundary element methods applied to room acoustics.

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Matt Calton supports applied research projects and environmental noise consulting. He is currently developing tools to visualize overflight noise as well as graphical user interfaces for use in human listener tests and noise exposure evaluations. Mr. Calton received his BS in Applied Physics and M.S. in Physics from Brigham Young University, with an emphasis in Acoustics. As an undergraduate, he optimized the sound system for an auditorium using state-of-the-art acoustic modeling and measurement techniques. His graduate work focused on designing compact, cost-efficient passive noise control elements for operator cabins in large construction vehicles. Mr. Calton is a two-time recipient of the Best Paper Award from the Acoustical Society of America Noise Technical Committee.

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Dr. Blaine Harker has a variety of research and development expertise for array signal processing applications, aeroacoustics, and underwater acoustics. He is currently responsible for jet noise research at BRRC including computational fluid dynamics (CFD) computation, array processing, nonlinear acoustics, measurements, and LabVIEW programming. Prior to joining the BRRC team, he worked as a scientist at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center specializing in array design and signal processing research. Dr. Harker has experience in conventional and adaptive beamforming, holography, and other acoustic inverse problems. He has also contributed to multiple large-scale underwater and aeroacoustic field experiments where hundreds of acoustic measurements were collected and analyzed. Dr. Harker has presented nearly two dozen research conference lectures and co-authored twenty papers and conference proceedings. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from Brigham Young University where he specialized in acoustics research. Dr. Harker’s dissertation characterized military aircraft jet noise using wavepacket analysis and other array processing methods.

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Dr. Máté (Matt) Szőke conducts computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations, experimental testing, data analysis, and reduced-order modeling on a variety of applied research projects within the field of aeroacoustics, aerodynamics, and acoustics. He has a wide range of experimental experience from conventional to state-of-the-art techniques, such as pressure-based aerodynamic testing, single-point and array-type microphone measurements, and laser-optical investigations (time-resolved particle image velocimetry, shadowgraph). Before joining the BRRC team in 2023, he worked at the Virginia Tech Stability Wind Tunnel as a Senior Research Associate, where he advised both graduate and undergraduate students, managed facility upgrades, performed industrial tests, and conducted fundamental research. Máté received his B.Sc. and first M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from Budapest University of Technology and Economics, and his second M.Sc. in CFD from Cranfield University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Bristol University. Dr. Szőke’s dissertation focused on trailing edge noise reduction using flow control methods.

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Kyle Schwartz is participating in multiple noise prediction projects focusing on noise emissions from eVTOL aircraft and quiet supersonic flight path planning, as well as advancing the acoustic measurement capabilities at BRRC to combine computer vision with acoustic measurements. Mr. Schwartz has ample prior experience in the prediction of aero-propulsion noise for hovering and forward flight aircraft, as well as experience in measuring noise using microphone phased arrays and conventional arrays. Prior to joining BRRC, Mr. Schwartz worked in the Vibrations and Acoustics Laboratory at Virginia Tech where he characterized noise emissions from pneumatic percussion tools. He also worked at AVEC Inc. for 17 years where he developed prediction tools and software for aero-propulsion noise and performed validation measurements in the wind tunnel and in situ. Mr. Schwartz earned his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech where he received the Royster Student Scholarship Award for his work on Natural Hearing Restoration for Encapsulating Helmets.

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