Oldenburg. Stefan Raufer, an Oldenburg hearing technology and audiology student, 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 on the "Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology" (SHBT) graduate programme in September, where he will pursue his doctorate over the next five years.

For his Master's thesis, Raufer is currently working in Prof. Dr Sarah Verhulst's research group in the "Hearing4all" cluster of excellence, which focuses on the physiology and modelling of auditory perception. Verhulst, who herself came to Oldenburg from Harvard in 2013, is delighted with her team's success. Only a maximum of eight doctoral students are accepted onto the SHBT programme each year.

After training as an electronics technician and then completing his vocational baccalaureate, Raufer came to Oldenburg to study in 2009 and completed the "Hearing Technology and Audiology" degree programme offered jointly by the University 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.