Lena-Marie Huttner

I work in personalized audiology, more specifically communication difficulty. Hearing impairment has a substantial effect on somebody’s ability to hold a conversation. Yet in research we don’t fully understand what communication difficulty really entails. Traditional hearing tests are good at assessing hearing, but do they tell us how well a person can actively participate in a conversation? In my project, we aim to bridge this gap. We are working to better understand how communication difficulty can manifest in behavior, speech and physiology and how hearing aids can help alleviate this difficulty.

My background is in phonetics and psycholinguistics. I have always been fascinated with languages and sounds. During my PhD I worked on speech sound perception and production in social interaction. While I really enjoyed studying these processes, the deeper I dug the more abstract the topic became. As I was finishing up my thesis, I started looking for a more impactful and applied way to continue my research. How could I take my knowledge and skills and apply them to a more concrete setting. And then a position in the hearing care field popped up and I am very happy it did.

As I was finishing up my PhD I came up with a list of criteria that I wanted in a future job: Research related, applied, in a multidisciplinary context, with a tangible impact and in an exciting place. And then, a few weeks after submitting my thesis I came across a job opening that ticked all those boxes: an industrial postdoc at Eriksholm. The proposed research topic fit my interests and profile perfectly and felt like a very natural continuation of my research.
And the rest, as they say, is history.

Curiosity. There is innate joy in looking at something that is not fully understood yet and just exploring it. One fascinating aspect of hearing science – especially when it comes to communication – is that you are both looking at universal mechanisms of human cognition and how these are shaped by individual traits, preferences, and habits. Finding this balance between the general and the individual is really interesting to me.

I also hope my research outcomes can help inform better hearing care. Having more of an impact-centered perspective on my research keeps me going even when an analysis script crashes or when faced with the comments of the infamous reviewer #2.

What a big question to answer in a short prompt. During this postdoc position at Eriksholm, I hope to conduct good science. You never fully know whether an experiment will work of fail, so I’ll keep this vague. But I hope that my work here is useful to audiologists, users, and researchers; that during my postdoc position we get closer to understanding how hearing aid users experience communication difficulty and move towards solving this problem.

I love being a tourist. I just moved to Copenhagen, so I spend my weekends visiting museums and landmarks and strolling through the city. Whenever I am not out exploring, you’ll probably find me either with my nose buried in a book or playing my guitar.

The life of a researcher also comes with the perk of having friends in many different places. On holiday I will either visit my family in Munich or my friends all over the world.

The COVID19 vaccine. I moved to France for my PhD in the summer of 2020. I don’t think I need to elaborate how isolating that time was. I am very grateful that the vaccine allowed me to live a normal life again a year and a half into my PhD.

I hope that policymakers start listening to scientists more. Especially on issues like climate change. I also hope for increasingly inclusive and open science practices and fairer working conditions in academia. Science is an important pillar of our society, access to it should not be hidden behind paywalls and invisible barriers.

Sadly, I don’t think we’ll find out what that dark matter stuff is all about or fully explore the depths of the ocean while I am alive, but one can dream.