Aachen/Oldenburg. At this year's annual conference for acoustics (DAGA) in Aachen, the German Society for Acoustics (DEGA) awarded the Lothar Cremer Prize for outstanding achievements by young scientists to Dr rer. nat. Jan Rennies-Hochmuth. With this award, the society honours his research work on auditory perception and in particular on speech comprehension in the presence of reverberation, echo and background noise. Rennies-Hochmuth works on computer-based models for predicting loudness perception and speech intelligibility. As part of his work at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, he transfers findings from basic research into technological applications in the automotive, communications and consumer electronics sectors.

Rennies-Hochmuth studied Engineering Physics at the University of Oldenburg under Professor Birger Kollmeier and Professor Jesko Verhey and at Denmark's Technical University in Lyngby. In 2007, Rennies-Hochmuth received the Lower Saxony Science Prize for his Bachelor's thesis on loudness perception. Since 2008, he has played a key role in setting up the Oldenburg Project Group Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology at the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT, initially as a doctoral candidate and since 2012 as group leader.

The Lothar Cremer Prize is one of the most prestigious prizes awarded annually in Germany in the field of technical acoustics and is endowed with €2,000.

[Press release of the Fraunhofer IDMT, (c) Meike Hummerich, 16 March 2016]