The deadline for people wishing to enter this year's listing of Australia's Most Innovative Engineers has been extended to Friday, 10 March.
Dr Stefan Mauger from Cochlear was included in last year's list for his work on the Nucleus 6 SmartSound iQ sound processing suite.
He says, while the majority of cochlear implant recipients are able to understand speech well in quiet environments, performance in noisy environments can be difficult for some people.
"For hearing aid users, noise reduction technologies have not been able to provide speech understanding benefits," he said.
The noise reduction technology introduced in Nucleus 6 results in a roughly 20% improvement in speech understanding and a 55% improvement in listening quality in noise. Acceptance of the technology is very high, with benefits experienced by over 100,000 people who have either received a cochlear implant system for the first time, or who are current cochlear implant users upgrading to the new sound processor.
"This new technology is the culmination of a number of innovations across auditory neuroscience, understanding the unique signal characteristics driving user’s performance, quality, and acceptance, and across signal processing, developing state-of-the-art signal enhancement techniques to accentuate these characteristics across diverse listening environments," said Mauger.
Mauger is also keen to point out that while he oversaw the project from start to finish, it was a team effort and the kudos was shared around the company.
"There are probably 50 other people who've been involved in it," he says. "Ten engineers from the DSP department, our whole office here which is about 16 staff, audiology engineers and administrators, and all of the managers and their clinical staff around the world who took it out in early stages."
Engineers can nominate themselves for the Most Innovative Engineers listing or be nominated by others and they do not need to be members of Engineers Australia. Nominations are open to all engineers working in Australia and Australian engineers working overseas.
Any technology, project or product mentioned must have been developed, commenced or completed during the period 2015-2017. Engineers who were included in last year’s list may enter again, as long as it is not the same project for which they were selected.
Details on how to nominate can be found at: bit.ly/innovative17
[Dr Stefan Mauger]