Oldenburg. Stefan Raufer, a student of hearing technology and audiology at the University of Oldenburg, has been accepted onto a prestigious doctoral programme at the elite US universities Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). After completing his Master’s thesis on the mechanics of the inner ear, the 25-year-old will begin his studies in the ‘Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology’ (SHBT) postgraduate programme in September, where he will work towards his PhD over the next five years.

For his Master’s thesis, Raufer is currently working in the research group led by Prof. Dr Sarah Verhulst within the “Hearing4all” cluster of excellence, which focuses on the physiology and modelling of auditory perception. Verhulst, who herself moved to Oldenburg from Harvard in 2013, is delighted for her colleague on this achievement. Each year, a maximum of eight PhD students are admitted to the SHBT programme.

After completing an apprenticeship as an electronics technician and subsequently obtaining his vocational baccalaureate, Raufer came to Oldenburg in 2009 to study, completing the ‘Hearing Technology and Audiology’ degree programme, which is jointly offered by the University of Oldenburg and Jade University of Applied Sciences. His bachelor’s thesis, which he wrote at the Technical University of Denmark, was followed a year ago by a master’s degree at the University of Oldenburg.