Ultrasonics Committee Update - 2025 Review
Written By: Helen Mulvana
International Ultrasonics Symposium
The main event of the UFFC-S Ultrasonics year is always the International Symposium in Ultrasonics. Held in Utrecht with local chairs, Jan D’Hooge and Chris de Korte, the conference attracted over 1600 in-person delegates. In addition to a packed technical programme led by Ton van der Steen and Alfred Yu, we welcomed invited and clinical speakers, celebrated the best student papers, took part in student, industry and women in engineering events, and met colleagues for stimulating discussions.
To mark the end of the conference we benefited from a fabulous round-up of the technical highlights across each of the ultrasonics areas, not an easy job! However, also worthy of celebration is the impressive programme of additional events. These included the Student Career Networking (also supported by the Industry Engagement Committee), Student Pitch Competition, and the Student Goodbye Social delivered by student events team and ultrasonics student representatives, Andrew Markel and Filip Bodera. As has become typical, these were extremely well attended and provided easy opportunities for students new and old to the conference to make connections. The industry engagement team led by Nasim Basij also got us all moving around the exhibition spaces with their Industry Bingo Card and the women in engineering talk this year was delivered by Prof Susan Trollier-McKinstry who provided an inspiring and personal insight to her experiences and tips on ‘How to grow as a professional and a leader’.
LEFT: Prof Susan Trollier-McKinstry speaking at the IUS 2025 Women in Engineering lunchtime lecture; MIDDLE: Dr Elmergue Germano delivering his pitch at the Student Pitch Competition; RIGHT: Students enjoying the Student Goodbye Social
IUS Technical Programme Committee
Supporting the Symposium through invited speaker nomination, abstract review, session planning, chairing, and short course delivery are a technical programme committee (TPC) of over 250 dedicated, experts from across the global Ultrasonics community. The TPC comprises five groups: medical ultrasonics (Chair: Adrian Basarab), sensors, NDE & industrial applications (Chair: Kui Yao), physical acoustics (Chair: Yook-kong Yong), microacoustics: SAW, FBAR, MEMs (Chair: Songbin Gong) and transducers & transducer materials (Chair: Alessandro Savoia). The call for new TPC members interested in becoming involved in supporting future symposia is open now until 5th January.
The process for selection to the committees has followed a revised approach since 2023, with the aim to best represent our scientific community. Applicants who meet the qualification criteria listed on the call page are selected at random to fill the available positions, with a weighting applied to prioritise applications from under-represented groups. Typically, these have been women, applicants from areas outside of North America and Europe, and those from industry. So far, these measures have allowed us to increase the overall TPC membership that are women (17% to 21%), those from industry (22% to 23%) and colleagues from Asia (23% to 24%).
In 2026, IUS will be held in Raleigh, North Carolina USA (Chairs: Omer Oralkan, Caterina Galippi), with future IUS meetings to be held in Suntec, Singapore (Chairs: Zhen Xu, Kui Yao) in 2027 and Dublin, Ireland (Chairs: Christine Demore, Helen Mulvana) in 2028. The call for proposals for IUS 2029 will be launched early next year.
Special Topic Schools & Outreach Symposia
In addition to our main flagship symposium, the UFFC society supports a range of events providing additional education opportunities, to promote community engagement and support network development for our members. This year Ultrasonics continued our extremely successful Special Topic School on Waves and Transducers. Running since 2019, and led by Koen van Dongen alongside colleagues, this year’s school took place at IIT Gandhinagar, India in October. Look out for the call for future special topic schools to be launched in January 2026, for an expected delivery from 2027.
Following a busy year in 2024, no Ultrasonics outreach symposia took place in 2025, however the open call for future events has led to three new symposia in preparation: The South Asian Ultrasonics Symposium will take place in November 2026 at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India (Chairs: Arun Thittai, Avinash Eranki), the Central and Eastern Europe Ultrasonics Symposium will run in Poland in June 2026 (Chairs: Zbigniew Kowalewski, Marcin Lewandowski), and the Latin American Ultrasonics Symposium will take place in July 2027 in Maceió, Alagoas, Brazil (Chairs: Glauber T. Silva, Joao Ealo). Next year’s call for proposals for events from 2027, will be posted on the Volunteer Opportunities section of our website.
Appointments
In addition to appointments made to our various committees, each year we elect members by nomination and vote to the society’s Administrative Committee, with a term of three years and a Distinguished Lecturer with a term of one year. For 2026 our elected Adcom members are Hong Chen, Mami Matsukawa and Yook-kong Yong. I am also delighted to share that our Ultrasonics Distinguished Lecturer for 2026 will be Keith Wear. Please contact him to discuss the possibility of accessing his lecture, ‘Measurement of Acoustic Pressure with Hydrophones’ either in-person or virtually.
Awards
Finally, we are delighted to recognise the outstanding achievements made to ultrasonics by our community. Nominations for the Ultrasonics awards are made by you and voted on by a panel of anonymous awards committee members.
The IEEE Ultrasonics Early Career Investigator Award recognizes the achievements of a researcher in the area of ultrasonics and its applications. The award is specific to those researchers in the early stages of their career.
The 2026 recipient is Prof Yansong Yang, The Hong Kong University of Technology for ‘For Pioneering Contributions to Ultra-wide-spectrum Piezoelectric MEMs devices, Which Have impacted Both Academia and Industry’.
The IEEE Carl Hellmuth Hertz Ultrasonics Award is intended for primary investigators that have contributed to the field of ultrasonics. The award candidate has an excellent track record in terms of scholarly publications, technical reports and/or inventions/patents. The award is intended to recognize the investigator for their outstanding mid-career achievements and for promoting the field of Ultrasonics.
This year’s recipient is Prof Alfred Yu, University of Waterloo, ‘For extensive contributions to ultrasound imaging technology and therapeutic ultrasound’.
The IEEE Rayleigh Award represents the highest honour for achievement within the UFFC Society in the field of Ultrasonics. The achievement may be in technical innovations, research, education, publications, and related professional endeavours. Typically, the recipient will have demonstrated these accomplishments over a sustained period.
The IEEE Rayleigh Award 2025 is presented in recognition of Prof Pai Chi Li, National Taiwan University, ‘For his exceptional contribution in development of adaptive ultrasound imaging, photoacoustic molecular imaging, and shear wave elasticity imaging’.
Huge congratulations to each of our award recipients, and a grateful vote of thanks to everyone across our community who contributed to a rewarding and productive year in Ultrasonics. Look out for events and opportunities through our webpages and Volunteer Engagement posts and we look forward to working with as many of you as possible through 2027.
UFFC-S Ultrasonics Award Winners 2026 pictured holding their awards from left to right: Prof Pai Chi Li, Prof Alfred Yu, Prof Yansong Yang and alongside Prof Jafar Sanie, Ultrasonics Awards Chair (LEFT), Prof Zhen Xu and Songbin Gong.