Physics doctoral student Dorothea Wendt has been awarded the sponsorship prize of the Grand Lodge of Lower Saxony in the German Druid Order. The doctoral student receives the award, which is endowed with 2,000 euros, not only because of her outstanding academic qualifications, but above all because of her social commitment to other people. The hearing researcher and head of the Department of Medical Physics at the University of Oldenburg, Prof. Dr. Dr. Birger Kollmeier, will give the laudatory speech at the Graf Anton Günther Lodge award ceremony on 7 May 2011. This year, the sponsorship award of the Grand Lodge of Lower Saxony in the German Druid Order will be presented to Dorothea Wendt, as she has made a special effort to attract new prospective students, she is always a committed contact person for young students and she is also very active in the field of public relations. The Order's sponsorship award is intended to support talented young people. Candidates are selected on the basis of ethical and ideal values such as tolerance and humanity. The people to be sponsored are selected in cooperation with the Board of Trustees and those responsible for the respective field of study. Dorothea Wendt is currently working on her doctorate at the University of Oldenburg, which deals with the improved recording and modelling of speech comprehension under noise in normal and hard of hearing people. The aim of her work, which is located in an interdisciplinary context between physics, ENT medicine, linguistics, neuropsychology and audiology, is to separate the sensory component of speech comprehension (i.e. an internal image of the auditory scene in the brain) and the cognitive processing that builds on this (i.e. higher processing mechanisms for semantic recognition of a complex sentence).