Inyong Choi, PhD, and Yu-Hsiang Wu, MD, PhD, are part of the research team that recently won a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation. Putting together the expertise of a neuroscientist (Choi), an audiology researcher (Wu) and two professors in Computer Science, the interdisciplinary research project aims to give patients a more hands-on role in their hearing care, which will improve hearing aid satisfaction and overall livelihood.  

Octav Chipara, PhD, leads the collaborative project, along with his Computer Science colleague, Bijaya Adhikari, PhD.

The project has two main approaches for personalizing hearing aids. The first is making hearing aids more accessible and customizable for users.  The second focus is based on research showing that hearing loss can cause significant disruption of speech processing that traditional hearing aids cannot correct. 

“We hope to address the limitations of traditional amplification methods by designing more expressive amplification methods that trigger brain activity consistent with effective speech perception,” Chipara said, who has been spearheading hearing aid research at the University of Iowa since 2011, frequently collaborating with Wu.

Bravo!