The University of Texas at Dallas

Students Win Second Place in Acoustical Society’s International Competition

Electrical engineering students Ali Milani and Govind Kannan recently won second place in the Acoustical Society of America’s annual Student Challenge Problem.

Their paper provided a practical solution of high accuracy for estimating the speed and altitude of a turboprop plane flying overhead (as well as the source, or rest, frequency of its propeller blade rate) based on the sound of the aircraft recorded by a microphone on the ground.

Milani and Kannan are Ph.D. students and research assistants working on statistical signal processing with an emphasis on the applications of acoustic signals.

“Ali and Govind are very talented and hardworking students performing impressive work in their research projects,” said Dr. Issa Panahi, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and their adviser. “They participated in this technical competition and came out ahead of students from many universities in U.S. and around the world. It is exciting to see such technical achievement by UTD students, and it is even more exciting to work with such talented students every day.”