AUDIS Winter School (Geitau, Germany)

The AUDIS winter school was held from the 25th of January to the 31st of January at the Postgasthof Rotewand in the little Bavarian village of Geitau near Bayrischzell. The aim of this winter school was to allow the researchers to interact with each other and with the experts in an informal setting, foster a sense of team spirit and to obtain knowledge of the state-of-the-art in audiological research and signal processing from the visiting fellows: Dr. Brian Moore (Cambridge) and Dr. Deliang Wang (Ohio State). The talks by the visiting fellows was the highlight of the scientific programme, and was ably complemented by talks from the AUDIS board members and experienced researchers.

Talks within the Winterschool

  • Development and Evaluation of a Method for Fitting Hearing Aids with Extended High-Frequency Response - Prof. Brian C.J. Moore (Cambridge University)
  • Cocktail party problem as a binary classification - Prof. Deliang Wang (Ohio State University)
  • Factors Underlying Individual Differences in Auditory Performance and Hearing-Aid Benefit - Prof. Brian C.J. Moore (Cambridge University)
  • Speech segregation by computational auditory scene analysis - Prof. Deliang Wang (Ohio State University)
  • Hearing aids: An overview of current signal processing and fitting strategies - Dr.-Ing. Henning Puder (Siemens audiologische Technik)
  • Evaluation methods and cochlear implant strategies - Prof. Jan Wouters (KU Leuven)
  • Review of cochlear implants - Dr. Shouyan Wang (University of Southampton)
  • Target speech enhancement using microphone arrays: Fmriomxtures to 'clean' speech - Dr.-Ing. Nilesh Madhu
  • Single channel enhancement of noisy speech - Prof. Rainer Martin

Work packages

During the Winter School the AUDIS fellows were also given the opportunity to put what they had learnt into practice by splitting into two groups and dealing with two interesting topics relevant to signal processing and audiology. The results obtained during the discussion with the visiting scientists and AUDIS board members were presented in two session to all other members. The topics of the work packages were

  • Definition and implementation of measures to quantify performance of hearing aid algorithms
  • Design the hearing aid of the future

Social activities

  • Team building workshop: Introduction to the personality types according to Myers Brigg
  • Outdoor activities: skiing in the beautiful Bavarian alps (with an introductory lesson for the newbies), long walks in the snow-covered landscape, and flood-light tubing

Participants views

  • I really enjoyed the winter school, and I thought that it was particularly successful in team building and cross conversation between signal processing and audiology.
  • Winter school in Bayrischzell was a quite nice mixture of learning and having entertainment. I benefited from the good lectures given by professors and having discussion with other research fellows.
  • It is great experience to communicate face to face with excellent experts in the field of audiology and signal processing.
  • A unique chance to talk, discuss and learn a lot from the experts and other research fellows in a nice, friendly and cozy atmosphere.