2020 EUHA Sponsorship Award: Digital Award Ceremony

(EUHA/Mainz, 9 October 2020) The award ceremony for the eleventh EUHA Sponsorship Award was held on 7 October 2020 – in online format, for the first time. By presenting three young people with the award, the jury has honoured them for their excellent work. The awardees are pioneers. As are all hearing aid acousticians who had to tread new paths during the coronavirus pandemic.

In her laudation, Eva Keil-Becker remarked that she considered the current situation an opportunity, and welcomed the prize winners saying: “I am delighted that we have come together digitally today. Corona has taught us to rethink. It’s fantastic to have this opportunity to network using our computers, and connect with one another in this way.” Quoting Friedrich Nietzsche, she said: “New paths are created by treading them.”
“And that’s what we are doing right now – on a global scale!” Eva Keil-Becker pointed out. During her speech, she encouraged the three awardees to walk new paths, to be, and remain, pioneers in their fields.

Christina Zinner was awarded first prize. In her bachelor’s thesis written at Jade University of Applied Sciences in Oldenburg, Hearing Technology and Audiology degree programme, she dealt with a comparison between five speech tests in speech-simulating background noise. The Freiburg sentence test is the speech test most frequently used in German-speaking countries. In the medium term, Christina Zinner would like to see a new recording of the Freiburg sentence test, which dates from the 1950s.

Second prize went to Simone Wollermann for her master’s thesis on the “Determination of temporal thresholds for subjective speech detection”, submitted at Lübeck University, Department of Auditory Technology.

Stephan Müller has written his master’s thesis at Lübeck University, Department of Auditory Technology. His paper on the “Evaluation of spatial sound quality in ecologically valid scenarios” was awarded third prize.

The award ceremony for the 2020 EUHA Sponsorship Award is now live on www.euha.tv. Later this year, the papers honoured with the award will be available for download at https://www.euha.org/en/news/2020-euha-sponsorship-award/.

The European Union of Hearing Aid Acousticians presented its first Sponsorship Award in 2010. The prize is awarded every year, and intended for students of a university of applied sciences or university who have completed their studies within the past 24 months. In 2020, the journeyman’s examination in hearing aid acoustics has been waived as a requirement for application. Graduates are eligible to submit their diploma, bachelor, or master theses. Papers should be dealing with the rehabilitation of deficiencies affecting the auditory communication system, and exhibit potential for development. Another requirement is that the subject matter can be practically applied by members of the trade of hearing aid acousticians. The EUHA attaches great importance to the auditory applicability of the results found to humans, processes or production methods. Moreover, relevance to hearing aid fitting and to customer service is required.