Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Magna Cum Laude, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2008
  • B.S., Magna Cum Laude, Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2004
Licenses & Certifications
  • Professional Engineer, Colorado, #PE.0058367
  • Professional Engineer, Wisconsin, #48642-6
  • Certified Occupational Hearing Conservationist
Academic Appointments
  • Research Scientist III, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University, 2018-2019
  • Research Scientist II, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University, 2015-2018
  • Research Scientist I, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University, 2010-2015
  • Graduate Research Assistant, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 2004-2008
Professional Honors
  • The Robert Bradford Newman Medal for Merit in Architectural Acoustics, 2005
  • Best Paper By A Young Presenter, 153rd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 2007.
Professional Affiliations
  • Acoustical Society of America
  • Institute of Noise Control Engineering
  • Technical Committees
  • American Society for Testing and Materials: ASTM Committee E33 on Building and Environmental Acoustics

Dr. Mennitt specializes in acoustics and is skilled in the characterization, design, and modeling of acoustical environments and devices. His primary areas of expertise include noise and vibration control, environmental noise, and audio engineering.

Dr. Mennitt has applied his expertise to noise and vibration control of machines, buildings, medical devices, consumer products, and other equipment. His experience includes applications involving mechanical waves in fluids and solids in the sonic and ultrasonic range. He routinely performs testing to characterize acoustical quantities such as sound power, directivity, transmissibility, and frequency response. Dr. Mennitt also draws on analytical and numerical methods to evaluate the mechanisms of sound generation, dominant sources, and transmission paths of various systems and components. He has developed and implemented solutions to effectively isolate vibration, reduce noise transmission to sensitive areas, and support the development of quiet products.

Dr. Mennitt's work is rooted in the human response to sound and vibration. His project work has involved the acquisition and the analysis of data to estimate perception, audibility, loudness, annoyance, sound quality, and other psychoacoustic metrics. Dr. Mennitt is a certified Occupational Hearing Conservationist and has evaluated occupational noise exposure, hearing conservation programs, and the efficacy of mitigative measures to protect hearing in the workplace and other settings.

Dr. Mennitt has worked extensively with federal agencies to assess environmental noise and the consequences of noise exposure to humans and ecological systems. Prior to joining Exponent, he worked in partnership with Colorado State University and the National Park Service's Natural Sounds and Night Skies Division to manage acoustical environments. His research involved the spatiotemporal patterns of environmental sound on landscape scales, impacts of noise exposure, acoustical transducers, bioacoustics, flow noise, and predictive modeling. Dr. Mennitt has designed acoustical devices and methods for data acquisition, calibration, and monitoring sound in extremely quiet environments. While at Colorado State University, Dr. Mennitt also taught a course on acoustics, noise, and signal processing.

Dr. Mennitt's experience in computational acoustics includes deterministic time and frequency domain simulations of acoustic propagation as well as applications that exploit statistical learning and predictive modeling. He led a multidisciplinary team to pioneer technology that uses geospatial data to generate comprehensive maps of environmental sound levels and noise exposure on continental scales. He has worked with academia, government, and industry to translate these estimates to implications for land management, ecological, epidemiological, military, and commercial applications.

Dr. Mennitt's background is in mechanical engineering. He performed his doctoral work at Virginia Tech's Vibration and Acoustics Laboratory, developing terrestrial sonar systems for localization and tracking of acoustic sources in free-field and cluttered environments. During this research, he developed robust statistical methods for classification of acoustical signals and fusion of information from distributed sensor networks. He has also created tools for beamforming, adaptive filtering, speech processing, and other signal processing applications with free field and diffracting microphone arrays. While at the Vibration and Acoustics Laboratory, he conducted testing with anechoic and reverberation rooms, intensity probes, impedance tubes, modal impact hammers, accelerometers, and shakers. Other graduate work included applications in spatial audio, active noise control for signal enhancement, architectural acoustics, music production, and audio engineering. His training and expertise in audio engineering helps Dr. Mennitt conduct educated and critical observations to address acoustical issues.