Susan Aliakbary Hosseinabadi

My main research area is to understand more about communication behavior in real-life scenarios. My aim is to realize how hearing technology can assist people with hearing loss in interactive communication and thus increase their quality of life. To do this, I need to include various groups of outcome measures and that requires complex experimental setups and statistical models to extract the strongest valid output representing communication difficulty.

My background is in biomedical engineering and my PhD focused on neuro-rehabilitation and corresponding consequences on brain reorganization. So, I did not learn too much about hearing science, but I am always interested to know how rehabilitation processes and health technology can improve patient’s life. The change from neuroscience to hearing was not too complicated for me as I am eager to enroll in projects with great potential to help people suffering from disabilities.

My earlier work at Aalborg university was highly limited with theoretical and educational aspects. By coming to Eriksholm I could find more opportunities to observe applications with high impact. In the industry, there is a high potential to move from basic science to practical application. My work at Eriksholm mainly focuses on development of a valid global marker that can represent communication difficulty in real-world conditions. This marker can be valuable for both healthcare professionals and people with hearing loss.

I enjoy coping with challenges like experiments with a complex setup and integration with various statistical models. When I first arrived at Eriksholm, there was not any communication laboratory and I spent some months preparing one by installing different equipment, writing programs and documents. Besides that, helping people with disabilities such as people with hearing loss is one of my goals and working at Eriksholm allows me the possibility to become involved in different projects with exactly that goal.

I hope science can provide a better life for all people, particularly those with health issues. Related to my own research, I hope we can find a technology that can assist people with hearing loss to enroll in social activities without any worries of having problems in following and understanding conversation with others.

The first point is spending time with my family, more importantly my kids. As my family lives in Iran, I prefer to travel there when I have enough time. I am also interested in aerobics and cardio exercises in addition to cycling. As I grew up in a city with fascinating nature and warm weather, I really enjoy outdoor activities in warm weather.

I have different thoughts in my mind but scientifically I would highlight advanced portable and user-friendly technologies adapted to users’ needs. For instance, it can be a smart hearing aid that monitor the environmental noise and adapt filtering threshold or corresponding directionality. These techniques help people to achieve their needs easily without spending a lot of time training on this equipment.

My work is to ease communication for people with hearing loss. I hope we can understand the main reasons why communication can be more challenging for this group of people and then be able to implement new techniques in hearing aids to overcome these sources of difficulty. This will enable people with hearing impairment to become more active in society and enjoy their life.