The Haus des Hörens in Oldenburg, the ENT Clinic at Hanover Medical School and a consortium of the world's leading hearing aid, cochlear implant and audio system manufacturers are taking part in the "Germany's Cutting-edge Cluster - More Innovation" competition with a joint concept. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research launched the high-calibre competition at the end of August.

Under the title "Auditory Valley: Hearing in Lower Saxony", the vision of developing the Hanover/Oldenburg region into the world's leading development and production centre for hearing systems of all kinds is presented. The HörTech Center of Competence, the University of Oldenburg, the Hearing Centre and the OOW University of Applied Sciences are involved in the initiative under the umbrella of Oldenburg's "Haus des Hörens". "Our initial successes in the Excellence Initiative and the call from the federal government and the state of Lower Saxony to place greater emphasis on the application-oriented aspect of hearing research prompted us to take this step," explained the spokesperson for the initiative, Prof. Dr Dr Birger Kollmeier. "The massive support from leading international companies such as Sennheiser and the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft has encouraged us in this endeavour".

Meanwhile, Annette Schavan announced that 38 applicants had entered the cutting-edge cluster. "We have triggered a great dynamic with the competition: clusters from business and science are lining up and focussing on their strengths. We will honour and promote the five best concepts in September 2008 so that they can reach the top internationally," promised Schavan at the launch of the competition in Berlin.

In a strict procedure, the 15 best concepts will be selected from the 38 competition outlines. These are then invited to submit a complete proposal. The five winners will each receive up to 40 million euros in funding over a period of five years.