University College London
Josef Schlittenlacher is a Lecturer in Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences at University College London. His research aims to develop computational models of hearing and new methods to detect and characterise hearing loss.
Josef obtained a PhD in Psychology at the TU Darmstadt, Germany. He worked as a researcher and lecturer at the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester and was a visiting researcher at Seikei University in Tokyo. He consults companies on the auditory perception of new noise sources like “flying taxis” or the implementation of advanced hearing tests.
Developing new hearing tests to improve hearing aid fitting
Read about Josef’s research projectJosef’s approaches to hearing research
I gained an interest in neuroscience while I studied engineering. Decoding the human brain seemed much more interesting than working on human-made codes. Hearing research is an amazing combination of working on these fundamental research questions and helping people at the same time.
I hope that my computational models improve our understanding of human perception: to advance neuroscience, to make predictions on the impact of sound and to understand an individual’s perception. For the latter, new and precise tests are needed that can characterise an individual’s hearing in various listening environments.
It means a lot. We can develop an unbiased way to test someone’s hearing at loudness levels that are relevant in daily life. Equally important, it offers a young scientist the opportunity to start a career in hearing research with excellent connections to the wider community from the beginning.