Just in time for the start of the new round of the German government's Excellence Initiative, the "Centre for Hearing Research" established jointly by the University of Oldenburg and Hannover Medical School is almost complete. Thanks to support from the state of Lower Saxony, six new professorships have now been filled at the University of Oldenburg and three professorships have been established in Hanover.

"Strengthening basic research on the subject of hearing is the primary goal here. With three new professorships in physics, two in psychology and one in biology, we are now ideally positioned in Oldenburg," commented Professor Dr Dr Birger Kollmeier, spokesperson for the Centre for Hearing Research, on the current status. He also praised the appointment of Professor Kral to the new Chair of Clinical Electrophysiological Hearing Research at the University of Hanover, which is excellent. "This has enabled us to significantly raise the university's profile in the field of hearing".

This is also urgently needed for the upcoming third round of the German government's Excellence Initiative, as high competitive pressure is expected from the originally funded Clusters of Excellence, which are now being extended. However, the University of Oldenburg is optimistic: with Prof Doclo (signal processing/acoustics), Prof van de Par (acoustics/psychoacoustics) and Prof Verhey (neuroacoustics), the technical side of hearing research will be significantly strengthened, while Prof Christine Köppl (brainstem physiology), Prof Herrmann (cognitive research, EEG) and Prof Debener (MEG/EEG) will provide decisive impetus in the neuro-side of hearing research. "Thanks to the active interdisciplinary co-operation between Physics, Biology, Psychology, Linguistics, Computing Science and Special Needs Education, we can now report that eight percent of all Oldenburg professors are active in hearing research," emphasised Kollmeier.