Prof. Georg M. Klump completed his PhD studies at the Ruhr University of Bochum from 1980 to 1984. He is now a Professor Emeritus of Animal Physiology & Behavior at Oldenburg University and also the Director of the Joint Research Academy of the Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all" at Oldenburg University. A major focus of the research in his group is the mechanisms underlying auditory processing and their age-related changes. The main research methods involve psychophysical studies and neural correlates of auditory perception. The group has investigated a wide range of animals, including different bird species (starling, great tit, barn owl) and mammal species (mouse, gerbil, human). The goal is to understand how signal processing has been optimized for perceiving sounds in the complex acoustic scenes provided by the real world. The studies aim to provide a better understanding of human age-related auditory processing deficits, which may lead to improved technical hearing support and therapies for enhancing hearing in the elderly.
Prof. Christine Köppl received her PhD at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 1989. She was a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Physiology, University of Sydney, Australia (2006-2009). In 2009, she moved to take a full professorship for Cochlear and Auditory Brainstem Physiology at the University of Oldenburg. She has published about 110 papers in various journals. Her research topics mainly include: Auditory Neuroscience, Inner ear, Cochlea, Auditory Processing, Evolution of Auditory Systems, Age-related cochlear changes.
Sonja Pyott is Associate Professor in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the molecular and cellular neuroscience of the auditory and vestibular systems and integrates investigation of the 1) fundamental biology of sensory transduction in the inner ear; 2) pathophysiology underlying hearing and balance disorders; and 3) consequences of hearing and balance disorders on health and wellbeing. The goal of her research is to develop new strategies for prevention and treatment of hearing and balance disorders. To achieve this goal, her research group uses an interdisciplinary toolkit that leverages physiological, imaging, transcriptomic, genomic, comparative and evolutionary approaches to investigate the auditory and vestibular pathways in animal models and humans. Her academic training includes a BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State University, a Fulbright Scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany, a PhD from Stanford University, and postdoctoral research at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She was Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology and Marine Biology at the University of Wilmington North Carolina before moving the Netherlands.
