Ingeborg Hochmair-Desoyer

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Ingeborg Hochmair-Desoyer

Ingeborg J. Hochmair-Desoyer , nee Desoyer, also Ingeborg Hochmair, (* 1953 in Vienna ) holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, and together with her husband Erwin Hochmair developed the world's first electronic multi-channel cochlear implant . With him she founded the medical technology company MED-EL in 1990 , of which she is the technical director (CTO) and managing partner (CEO). In 2013 Ingeborg Hochmair and two other scientists were awarded the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award in New York for the development of the modern cochlear implant .

Life

Hochmair is the daughter of the physicist Elizabeth Desoyer and the professor of mechanical engineering and dean at the Vienna University of Technology Kurt Desoyer and studied electrical engineering at the Vienna University of Technology from 1971 with a diploma in 1976 and (after a research stay as a Fulbright scholar at Stanford University ) with the Doctorate 1979. Topic was the development of electronic hearing aids (stimulation of the cochlea ), on which she worked with her professor Erwin Hahn using the then new CMOS technology in analog electronics. "From 1976 to 1986 she worked as a scientific assistant at the chair for electrical engineering and electronics at the Technical University of Vienna. In 1979 she was an associate professor at the Institute for Medical Electronics at Stanford University. In 1986, the Hochmair couple decided to move from Vienna to Innsbruck, where Ingeborg Hochmair initially worked as a research assistant and later as a visiting professor until 1999 Institute for Applied Physics and E taught electronics at the University of Innsbruck. In 1998 she received the Venia Legendi (Univ. Doz.) In biomedical engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Vienna.

In the early 1980s Ingeborg Hochmair realized her idea of ​​founding a company for the development and manufacture of hearing implants and, together with her husband Erwin Hochmair, founded the medical technology company MED-EL. In 1990 MED-EL hired its first employees, which marked the beginning of the company. Since 2000, Ingeborg Hochmair has increasingly appeared as the founder and co-founder of companies in the field of hearing loss and hearing implants.

Work and research in the field of hearing implants

Ingeborg and Erwin Hochmair started developing cochlear implants at the Vienna University of Technology in 1975. Their goal was to enable users not only to perceive noises, but also to enable them to understand speech to a certain extent. Together they developed the world's first microelectronic multichannel cochlear implant. Thanks to the long, movable electrode, electrical signals could be transmitted through a large part of the cochlea, the snail-shaped inner ear, to the auditory nerve for the first time. They also worked with the otologist and professor from Vienna, Kurt Burian . With only one and a half years of development, their first multi-channel device was implanted on December 16, 1977 by Kurt Burian in Vienna, which stimulated the cochlea in 8 places (that is, it had 8 channels).

The second implantation followed in March 1978. Despite an early shunt in the first implant user and tinnitus in the second implant user, pitch perception could be detected and the second implant user was able to reliably identify and differentiate between different simulation channels.

With the new version for improved signal transparency, a new milestone was set in the development of cochlear implants in March 1980: thanks to a small audio processor worn on the body, it was possible for the first time to understand words and sentences without lip reading in a quiet environment. About 500 implants have been used in adults and children over the years. With COMFORT, MED-EL brought the world's first BTE (behind-the-ear) speech processor for cochlear implants onto the market in 1991. It was characterized above all by its energy-efficient technology and its external signal processing.

The next major technological leap was the development of a cochlear implant system with a high stimulation frequency that mastered a new speech coding strategy developed by Blake Wilson (co-winner of the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Awards 2013). Since 1994, this system has set new standards in terms of performance. It was the first implant system that enabled the majority of postlingually deaf adults to understand more than 50% of monosyllabic words just 6 months after implantation, according to a multicenter study. The innovation meant that these implant users could talk to a stranger on the phone about an unfamiliar topic.

Her special attention to the cochlea and its sensitive structures is also reflected in Ingeborg Hochmair's research and development work. Their goal was to develop a highly flexible electrode that, despite being deeply inserted into the cochlea, does not damage the sensitive structures. In the past few years Ingeborg Hochmair and Blake Wilson have worked together on many current topics, including the benefits of bilateral implants, combined electrical-acoustic stimulation and cochlear implants for people with unilateral deafness.

During the further development, a cooperation with the 3M Corporation was initially planned, but that fell apart and in 1989 the couple founded their own company in Innsbruck, MED-EL. As managing partner and technical director of MED-EL, Ingeborg Hochmair is responsible for numerous product innovations and innovative solutions that are tailored to the diverse needs of patients and surgeons around the world.

Publications

Ingeborg Hochmair has written more than 100 scientific publications on cochlear implants, medical technology, neuroprostheses and audio & speech processing. The most important are:

  • with E. Hochmair: Implantable eight-channel stimulator for the deaf. In: Proc. European Solid State Circuits Conf. (ESSCIRC) 77. Ulm, FRG Sept. 1977, pp. 87-89.
  • with E. Hochmair: Procedure for electrical stimulation of the auditory nerve and multi-channel hearing prosthesis to carry out the procedure. Patent DE 2823798, filed May 1978.
  • with E. Hochmair: Multifrequency system and method for enhancing auditory stimulation and the like. US patent 4284856, filed Sept. 1979.
  • with ES Hochmair: Design and fabrication of multi-wire scala tympani electrodes. In: Annals of the New York Academy of Science. Volume 405, 1983, pp. 173-182.
  • Technical implementation and psychoacoustic evaluation of a system for chronic multi-channel stimulation of the acoustic nerve. Dissertation. TU Vienna, 1981, ISBN 3-85369-491-8 .
  • with ES Hochmair and K. Burian: Four years of experience with cochlear prostheses (invited). In: Med. Prog. Technol. 8, 1981, pp. 107-119.
  • with ES Hochmair and HK Stiglbrunner: Psychoacoustic temporal processing and speech understanding in cochlear implant patients. In: RA Schindler, MM Merzenich: Cochlear Implant. Raven Press, New York, 1985, ISBN 0-88167-076-6 , pp. 291-304 /.
  • with C. Zierhofer and ES Hochmair: New hardware for analog and combined-analog-and-pulsatile sound-encoding strategies. In: Progress in Brain Research. Vol. 97, Elsevier Science Publishers, 1993, pp. 291-300.
  • with W. Arnold, P. Nopp, C. Jolly, J. Müller and P. Roland: Deep electrode insertion in Cochlear implants: Apical Morphology, electrodes and speech perception results. In: Acta Otolaryngol. 123 (5), 2003, pp. 612-617.
  • with P. Nopp and C. Jolly among others: MED-EL Cochlear implants: State of the art and a glimpse into the future. In: Trends in Amplification. 10 (4), Dec 2006, pp. 201-219.
  • The importance of being flexible. In: Nat Med. 19 (10), Oct 2013, pp. 1240-1244.

Awards

She is an honorary member of the German Society for Audiology .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingeborg Hochmair - model entrepreneur with a calling. ( Memento from October 17, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) APA-Science, September 12, 2013.
  2. ↑ Michael Riedler: Good sense of hearing. In: Economic Journal. May 19, 2001, archived from the original on October 17, 2013 ; Retrieved November 18, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Journey to Developing MED-EL's Cochlear Implant: Interview with Dr. Ingeborg and Professor Erwin Hochmair, Founders of MED-EL. Cochlear Implant Online, December 19, 2012, accessed November 18, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Big honor day of the Medical University Innsbruck under the sign of Europe. In: Studium.at. November 15, 2010, accessed November 18, 2016 .
  5. ↑ dieStandard.at - The electrical engineer who makes hearing again . Article dated August 20, 2014, accessed August 20, 2014.
  6. ^ Russ Prize-winning engineers to discuss discovery behind cochlear implant. ( Memento from April 2, 2015 in the web archive archive.today ) In: My daily tribune. February 24, 2015.
  7. ↑ Academic dignitaries of the Vienna University of Technology ( Memento of the original from February 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved February 3, 2016. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.tuwien.ac.at
  8. ↑ University of Innsbruck congratulates Ingeborg Hochmair on Garbsen's ring of honor . Article dated November 19, 2017, accessed November 20, 2017.
personal data
SURNAME Hochmair-Desoyer, Ingeborg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Hochmair, Ingeborg; Desoyer, Ingeborg; Hochmair-Desoyer, Ingeborg J.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian electrical engineer
DATE OF BIRTH 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna