Distinguished Professor Emeritus Zwislocki receives lifetime achievement award from American Auditory Society

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Zwislocki receives lifetime achievement award from American Auditory SocietyMarch 14, 2007Kelly Homan Rodoskikahoman@syr.edu

Jozef J. Zwislocki, Distinguished Professor Emeritus in Syracuse University’s L.C. Smith College of Engineering and Computer Science, received the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Auditory Society (AAS) March 5 during the society’s annual meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The AAS is a multidisciplinary professional organization that aims to increase knowledge and understanding of the ear, hearing and balance; disorders of the ear, hearing, and balance, and preventions of these disorders; and habilitation and rehabilitation of individuals with hearing and balance dysfunction.

During his more than 60-year career, Zwislocki has had a profound impact upon the field of auditory research. His research has resulted in some of the top innovations in the field, and many of the nation’s top researchers have worked in Zwislocki’s internationally known laboratory at SU’s Institute for Sensory Research (ISR), created by him.

Zwislocki, a member of the National Academy of Sciences and one of SU’s most respected and distinguished faculty members, has received other prestigious honors in recent years. In April 2003, he was honored with a four-hour special session at the 145th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Nashville, Tenn. The session, in which a number of top auditory researchers participated, served to commemorate Zwislocki’s scientific career and highlight his many key contributions to the field.

In 2004, Zwislocki received an honorary doctor of science degree from Syracuse University, honoring his six decades of groundbreaking research and his teaching and mentoring of students who today are some of the top researchers in the field.

Zwislocki has been a member of the SU community for 50 years. He came to SU in 1957 from Harvard University and founded the Bioacoustics Laboratory in SU’s Department of Special Education. He then founded the Laboratory of Sensory Communication in the College of Engineering in 1963, adding laboratories in touch and vision as well as a Ph.D. program in neuroscience.

In 1970, he invented the “Zwislocki Coupler,” an artificial ear that determines the amount of current needed in an earphone to produce a particular sound intensity at the eardrum. The Zwislocki Coupler has been accepted as a national standard for hearing-aid earphones. Under his direction, the laboratory grew to the present Institute for Sensory Research in 1973; it has become a world-class center for the study of sensory systems and today continues to build upon Zwislocki’s groundbreaking work.

Using the institute as a hub, Zwislocki initiated one of the earliest undergraduate departments of bioengineering. In 1985, he was the first recipient of the Von Bekesy Medal in Physiological Acoustics from the Acoustical Society of America “for landmark contributions to our knowledge of the hydromechanical, neurophysiological and perceptual mechanisms of the auditory system,” one of only three ever awarded.

A native of Poland, Zwislocki was elected to the M.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1990 in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Membership in the academy is regarded as the highest distinction for a U.S. scientist. In 1991, the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, Poland, bestowed on Zwislocki the degree of Dr. h.c. (an honorary degree). In 1992, he received the Hugh Knowles Prize for distinguished achievement in the diagnosis and prevention of hearing disorders. He was elected a foreign associate of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1997.

Zwislocki has authored more than 200 publications and holds 17 patents. His 2002 work “Auditory Sound Transmission: An Autobiographical Perspective” (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates) summarizes and completes his life’s work on sound transmission and analysis in the ear, beginning with the outer ear and ending on the sensory cells in the cochlea of the inner ear.

He retired from teaching in 1992, but continues to work in his laboratory, influencing another generation of scientists, engineers and clinicians with his principles and insights.