Portrait of an Active Member of the Science & Technology Community

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Portrait of an Active Member of the Science
Technology Community
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Dr. Juan I. Arvelo Jr. earned his undergraduate
degree in Physics at the University of Puerto
Rico (UPR) with magna cum laude and the Enrico
Fermi award for best physics student. This was
followed with a PhD degree in Physics at Catholic
University of America (CUA) in Washington DC,
under Professor Emeritus Herbert Uberall. He has
been an active member of the American Institute
of Physics (AIP) and the Acoustical Society of
America (ASA) since 1984. His active involvement
commenced as president of the Washington DC
chapter of the Acoustical Society followed by two
terms as co-chair of the ASA Committee on
Regional Chapters.
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During this period, he was involved in
educational outreach efforts targeting
under-represented minorities in physics at annual
conferences of the National Society of Black
Physicists (NSBP), the National Society of
Hispanic Physicists (NSHP) and the Society for
the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans
Scientists (SACNAS). As a result of his efforts
to expose under-represented students to physics,
he later became the ASA liaison member to the AIP
Committee on Under-Represented Minorities (CURM)
and chair of the ASA Committee on Diversity in
Acoustics (CDA).
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Dr. Arvelo also became associate editor of the
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
(JASA) and the Proceedings on Meetings in
Acoustics (POMA), where he ensures that
manuscripts abide by their high technical
standards before publication. Publication in JASA
is coveted worldwide for the highest exposure in
the acoustics community. For example, in 2011,
JASA was cited more than 32,000 times while the
second place journal had half the number of
citations.
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More recently, he became an Acoustics Today (AT)
advisory board member chartered to steer the
technical magazines direction to better serve
the needs of the scientific community.