Oldenburg. The Oldenburg physicist and physician Prof. Dr. Dr. Birger Kollmeier has been elected as Incoming President of the European Federation of Audiological Societies (EFAS). Over the past six years, Kollmeier has already helped determine the destinies of the Federation as a general secretary - the researcher from Oldenburg will now be part of the EFAS board for another six years. In two years he will assume the position of president, after two more years he will become a so-called past president, to fill the role of an advisory board member.

EFAS is the umbrella organization of European audiological societies. It is driving the pan-European standardization of audiology. For example, EFAS has developed the concept of the "General Audiologist" and the "Audiological Specialist", which has, among other things, inspired the founding of the Oldenburger bachelor's and master's course "Hörtechnik und Audiologie" (hearing technology and audiology). Audiology deals with the causes, the diagnosis and the treatment of hearing impairments.

Kollmeier has been researching and teaching since 1993 at the University of Oldenburg. He is Director of the Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and spokesman of the Cluster of Excellence "Hearing4all". He is, among other things, Scientific Director of Hörzentrum Oldenburg GmbH and the Fraunhofer Project Group for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology. He has received numerous prestigious awards, including the Karl-Kuepfmüller Ring at the Technical University of Darmstadt (2009), the Lower Saxony Science Prize (2011), the International Award of the American Academy of Audiology (2012) and the German Future Prize (German President's Prize for Technology And Innovation, 2012).