From June 5 to June 10, 2022, the Physical Acoustics Summer School (PASS 2022) took place in Oxford, Mississippi, organized by the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) together with the University of Mississippi. LIMU was represented at the School by our graduate student, Ekaterina Ponomarchuk, who took part in this event with the support of the “BASIS” foundation travel grant.

The School was attended by over 30 graduate students from various universities of the United States, Great Britain, Norway, the Netherlands and Russia. Distinguished invited lecturers from American universities covered a wide range of Physical Acoustics disciplines. Among the speakers were specialists in Nonlinear Acoustics – Mark Hamilton, and Metamaterials – Mike Haberman, from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as Veerle Keppens – professor in Solid State Physical Acoustics from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Greg Swift from the Los Alamos National Laboratory interactively explained and demonstrated the basics of Thermoacoustics, and Glynn Holt from Boston University enthusiastically spoke in detail about Cavitation and Dynamics of Bubbles and Drops. A lecture on infrasound and atmospheric propagation of sound was given by Roger Waxler from the National Center for Physical Acoustics of the University of Mississippi, and the latest developments in the field of Medical Ultrasound were extensively covered by our colleague from the University of Washington – Tatiana Khokhlova.

Moreover, the PASS 2022 director, Josh Gladden, led a set of acoustic demonstrations vividly showing some basic principles of Wave Acoustics in practice. The School also organized a tour of the National Center for Physical Acoustics (NCPA) – a complex of acoustic laboratories at the University of Mississippi. Representatives from various NCPA laboratories gave talks on their field of study and demonstrated their latest developments and equipment.

Evenings after the lectures were mostly spent at the University Grove where students and lecturers had an opportunity to have scientific discussions outdoors. This allowed participants to get to know each other in a pleasant and friendly atmosphere and discuss the latest news in the field of Acoustics from various universities around the world.

Thus, the main idea of ​​the School was to bring together students and outstanding lecturers to discuss a wide range of topics in Physical Acoustics and to give young scientists an opportunity to meet the experts in their field and learn new things useful for their further scientific work.