Dr Maryanne Maltby, Senior Lecturer, Department of Vision and Hearing Sciences

Audiology course leaders from the various universities were invited to attend the International Symposium on Auditory and Audiological Research in Denmark from 24th - 26th August as guests of GN Resound (hearing aid/ audiological equipment manufacturers). After a tour of the research facilities at GN Resound near Copenhagen, we continued to Ballerup, a delightful spot at the edge of the sea, reached by driving over the very spectacular, longest bridge in Europe. The conference was held over three days and the speakers described their various researches mainly in aspects of speech intelligibility. There were some very eminent speakers, including Brian Moore (Cambridge University), as well as some lesser-known names, and a display of well-presented posters.

Talks included such topics as "Speech-inherent functional onomatopoeia for emotional analysis of phones" and "Horizontal-plane localization with bilateral cochlear implants using an auditory model based speech processing strategy", as well as some more clinically relevant titles such as "Psychosocial factors affecting hearing aid adjustment' and "Psychometric measurements for speech intelligibility in different noise types for normal-hearing and hearing-impaired listeners".

If I'm honest, much of it was heavy going but it was interesting and I learned from it. GN Resound were perfect hosts and the evenings provided a social networking opportunity, so were both highly enjoyable and useful. (Although one evening we got totally lost on the way back from the restaurant and had to be rescued by taxi and another night I caused great hilarity by slipping on a wet floor and ending flat on my back!) I have made contacts that I shall keep in touch with and we have formed a working group to consider aspects of the courses and of research where we can work more closely with the manufacturers. In addition GN Resound have agreed to fund two prizes - for our final year Hearing Aid Technology and Specialised Professional Practice assignments. So altogether a very worthwhile trip!