Volpe Center Acoustics Facility Staff Biography
Judith L. Rochat
Judith L. Rochat is a physical scientist in the Acoustics Facility at the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center. She joined the Center in 1998 and has since been involved in many projects. For FHWA, her work supports the Traffic Noise Model (TNM), including software development (acoustical algorithms and GUI improvements), field measurements and analysis for software validation (as the principal investigator), and TNM technical support. Also for FHWA, she produced an instructional video on acoustics and highway noise, managed the development of a new highway construction noise manual and model, and provides technical guidance for policy changes. Dr. Rochat is involved in numerous tire/pavement noise studies, addressing measurement, prediction, and policy issues. She is the principal investigator for two such studies, for Arizona DOT and Caltrans, where both involve measurements and analysis to evaluate pavement as a noise abatement tool. For the FAA, her work supports INM; this work includes detectability analysis and algorithm development. Also for FAA, she provides technical guidance regarding supersonic transport research.
Dr. Rochat’s Ph.D. research involved a computational analysis of underwater noise from airborne sonic booms. Her current research interests include computational acoustics, environmental noise, psychoacoustics, nonlinear acoustics, and marine bioacoustics. She is a member in the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Transportation Research Board (TRB) as the Chairman of the Highway Noise Subcommittee of the Committee on Transportation Related Noise and Vibration, the Institute of Noise Control Engineering - USA, and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). She has published in the Journal of ASA (JASA), the AIAA Journal, the Proceedings of ASME, the Proceedings of Inter-Noise, the Journal of Computational Acoustics, and the International Journal of Numerical Methods in Engineering. Dr. Rochat also authored the Transportation Noise Issues chapter of the 2004 McGraw-Hill Handbook of Transportation Engineering. In addition, she has made numerous presentations at conferences and universities. Dr. Rochat is currently participating on two National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) panels to help guide highway noise research.
