Department Directory — Micah Shepherd

Dr. Shepherd completed a BS in applied physics at BYU in 2005 and an MS in physics at BYU in 2007.  He then took a research faculty position at Penn State doing basic and applied research in structural acoustics.  In 2008, he enrolled in Penn State's Graduate Program in Acoustics, while maintaining his full-time research position. After completing his PhD in 2014, he concurrently taught and advised students in the Graduate Program in Acoustics while continuing to perform structural acoustics research. He joined the faculty at BYU in 2022, where he has broadened his research portfolio to include all aspects of wave characterization with applications in musical acoustics, flow noise and neuroscience. 

Current research areas include: 

1) Thermoelasticity - the study of energy dissipation mechanisms in vibrating beams and plates

2) Launch Vehicle Acoustics - the use of acoustic intensity in the near- and far-field of a rocket launch to localize the acoustic source 

3) Vibration-based Sound Power - the combination of elemental radiator theory and laser vibrometry to measure sound power of arbitrarily-shaped structures

4) Physics of Percussion Instruments - the acoustic measurement and physical modeling of percussion instruments to understand and predict their sound radiation  

5) Signal Characterization of Seizures - the study of seizure dynamics in the brain to understand their spatial and temporal characteristics and predict the onset of severe seizure events