"From the University of Oldenburg's point of view, the first ten years of HörTech have been excellent," said University President Prof. Dr Babette Simon on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of HörTech, the HörTech Center of Competence for Hearing Aid System Technology of the Oldenburg Hearing Centre and the University of Oldenburg. It was launched in 2001 as the first non-profit company (gGmbH) in which the university was directly involved. The aim of the foundation was to consolidate and expand hearing research at the university and to network with industry. Simon emphasised at the celebrations that this had clearly been successful. Prof. Dr. Norbert Dillier (University and ETH Zurich), who as Chairman of the HörTech Advisory Board has actively accompanied the development of the Centre of Competence over the past ten years, said: "HörTech and Oldenburg are perceived nationally and internationally as an outstanding location for hearing research. We congratulate the state of Lower Saxony for this innovation driver with international appeal." The Competence Centre for Hearing Aid Systems Technology was established after winning the "Competence Centres for Medical Technology" competition organised by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). "The start-up funding from the federal government and the initial infrastructure funding from the state gave us an enormous development boost ten years ago," said physicist and physician Prof Dr Dr Birger Kollmeier, Scientific Director, summarising the success story. "Our certified diagnostic software for speech understanding and our hearing test by telephone, which has already been used by over 40,000 people, are among our best-known products. We also work closely with the hearing aid industry in order to be able to implement the findings from basic research directly for the benefit of the hearing impaired." This intensive co-operation between physics, biology and psychology at the University of Oldenburg with medicine (Hannover Medical School) and engineering (Leibniz University Hannover) forms the core of the "Hearing4All" cluster, which is the only new cluster of excellence from Lower Saxony to be included in the current final round of the federal government's excellence competition. In addition to HörTech, the Jade University of Applied Sciences, the Fraunhofer Project Group for Hearing, Speech and Audio Technology, the hearing centres in Hanover and Oldenburg and ten industrial partners are also represented. "We want to achieve 'hearing for all' in all situations and for all people with varying degrees of hearing loss through a combination of interdisciplinary basic, applied and clinical research," said Kollmeier, who is the spokesperson for the alliance. The funding application was finalised in time for the HörTech anniversary. However, the decision as to whether "Hearing4all" will receive funding of up to 34 million euros will not be made until summer 2012.