Simon With

My job is sort of split in two parts. On one hand we have our own hearing clinic where we maintain rehabilitation of the around 300 people with hearing impairment who also help us as voluntary test subjects. On the other hand, as a research audiologist, I am involved in all aspects of the scientific work that involves use of our test subjects. This spans from recruitment, briefing, and execution of experiments to fitting test hearing aids and making sure everything runs smoothly. The research audiologist is sort of the ambassador for the user right from the beginning of planning a new experiment and all the way through the project.

In high school I specialized in physics and music. At some point we learned about acoustics, and I found that super interesting. My physics teacher made me aware of several higher educations that could potentially lead to working with acoustics, and one of these were audiology at the University of Southern Denmark. I went there and got completely excited, learning about the world of audiology.

As part of the master at the University of Southern Denmark, you do an internship, and I did mine at Eriksholm where I got the opportunity to take part in an experiment. This inspired me to set up a somewhat similar experiment at the university and use this for my master thesis. And, while I was working on that, a job opportunity came up at Eriksholm. I applied, and here I am!

Well, two things, actually. I am so fortunate that several times each week, I get to help a person with hearing loss hear better. This is so rewarding. Also, my job requires that I constantly stay updated and it is simply amazing to work here at Eriksholm where I am surrounded by experts who are always ready to share their knowledge. I learn something new all the time.

I hope that I will be able to continue to help people hear better, and that technology keeps developing at a pace enabling me to continue improving the quality of life in those I have already helped. An eventually, I would really like to do some research myself.

Besides my never ending project of refurbishing our apartment at home, I am a real food nerd. I really enjoy cooking in general, but in particular more specialized projects like making my own cheese, for instance. I am fascinated by the processes, both those you can control, and those you cannot. And on a completely different note, I am the editor of the Eriksholm daily fun fact about animals.

I believe that is the Human Genome Project which managed to map the human genome completely, sooner than anticipated because of the technological development. This result is of immense importance to for example development of medicine and the greatest thing about it is that it is open source.

I hope that the general perception of the human body changes from focusing on and repairing individual functionalities, to a more holistic understanding of how everything is tied together. I also hope that we continue to focus on developing green and sustainable solutions, store energy effectively, produce enough food for everyone without exhausting and destroying nature, that we can reuse all the plastic in the seas for new purposes, and that we will be able to develop medicin for everyone to live a better life and maintain their quality of life for as long as possible. I could probably go on…