History of the ICU
The International Congress on Ultrasonics (ICU) was constituted in 2005 as theresult of the merger of two international existing Congresses: The World Congress onUltrasonics (WCU) and Ultrasonics International (UI). The ICU is currently aninternational affiliated member of the International Commission for Acoustics (ICA),
the parent organization of many national and regional acoustical societies. The ICA
has membership within both the IUPAP (International Union for Pure and AppliedPhysics) and the IUTAM (International Union of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics)
and has as it mission to promote the international development and collaboration in all
fields of Acoustics.
The history of the ICU, as the merger of the two previous Congresses onultrasound, is thus relatively short because its first meeting was held in Vienna in 2007.
However, the history of the two Congresses integrating ICU, is much longer: the UI
started in the 1960ties and the WCU started in 1993. UI, the first international congress
devoted to ultrasound, was linked to the journal “Ultrasonics” created by the group
Butterworth-Heinemann in England and later acquired by the well known publisher
Elsevier.
The WCU was created in 1993, as an independent world congress, by a group ofultrasound scientists from several countries. The first WCU meeting was held in 1995 in
Berlin (Germany), under the leadership of the WCU Steering Committee, thencomposed of 17 renowned scientists from 13 different countries. The President of thiscongress was Prof. J. Herbertz. The attendance at this first ultrasonics world congress
was 562 delegates from 37 countries. The following WCU was held in 1997 in
Yokohama (Japan) under the Presidency of Prof. S. Ueha. The third WCU was held in
Lyngby (Denmark) jointly with the UI. The President of this Congress was Prof. L.
Bjørnø. This meeting was a first attempt towards a merger of WCU and UI. Thefollowing WCU was held in 2001 in Atlanta (USA) jointly with the IEEE. In 2003, theWCU was held in Paris (France), and its President was Prof. P. Laugier. This Congress
was chaired by Prof. L. Crum. In 2003 WCU was held in Paris and the President wasProf. P. Laugier.
Finally, the last WCU meeting, again jointly with UI, was held in Beijing(China); organized by Prof. H. Zhang and co-chaired by Profs. Ying Chong Fu and L.
Bjørnø. This meeting marked the starting point of the definitive merger of bothCongresses into the present ICU. In fact, the first ICU was held at the Technical
University of Vienna (Austria) with Prof. E. Benes as President. The next ICU will beheld for the first time in Latin-America, in the city of Santiago de Chile, organized by
the University of Santiago de Chile under the Presidency of Prof. L. Gaete Garretón.
Presently the Board of the ICU is constituted of the following members:•••••••••••••••••••••

Adriano Alippi, Italy
Ewald Benes, Austria, ICU Chairman
Leif Bjørnø, Denmark
Noriyoshi Chubachi, Japan
Lawrence Crum, USAMarc Deschamps, FranceArthur George Every, South Africa
Luis Gaete-Garretón, Chile, ICU President
Juan A. Gallego-Juarez, Spain
Joachim Herbertz, Germany
Sigrun Hirsekorn, Germany
Pascal Laugier, FranceOswald Leroy, Belgium
Peter Lewin, USA
Bogumil Linde, Poland, ICU Secretary General
Tim Mason, UKNick Pace, UKWolfgang Sachse, USA
Antoni Sliwinski, Poland
Sadayuki Ueha, Japan
Hailan Zhang, China