Hearing research successful at the 2025 UGO Open Science Award
Hearing research was strongly represented at the 2025 UGO Open Science Award ceremony at the University of Oldenburg: Dr. Giso Grimm, senior researcher at the Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics and in the Collaborative Research Center Hearing Acoustics, took second place with an individual application. Sumbul Jafri, a PhD candidate in the Hearing4all Cluster of Excellence, took third place in collaboration with researchers from the Department of Medical Physics and Acoustics, the Department of Psychology, and Hörzentrum Oldenburg.
2nd place: Dr. Giso Grimm – Toolbox for Acoustic Scene Creation and Rendering (TASCAR) & OVBOX
As head of a lab investigating the interaction between communication behavior and hearing aids, Grimm uses interactive virtual audiovisual environments that are used in study-related experiments with test subjects. For this purpose, he developed the “Toolbox for Acoustic Scene Creation and Rendering” (TASCAR) and the “Low-Delay Network Communication System OVBOX.” Grimm’s software enables the Oldenburg lab’s experiments to be conducted at other locations, thereby promoting collaboration among research institutions and reproducibility of scientific experiments. TASCAR and OVBOX are available as open source software and the associated scientific publications are freely accessible (open access).
Open source software:
TASCAR:
OVBOX:
Scientific publications:
- Grimm, G., Luberadzka, J. & Hohmann, V. (2019). A toolbox for rendering virtual acoustic environments in the context of audiology. Acta Acustica United with Acustica, 105(3), 566–578. https://doi.org/10.3813/AAA.919337
- Grimm, G. (2024). Interactive low delay music and speech communication via network connections (OVBOX). Acta Acoustica, 8, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1051/aacus/2024011
3rd place: Sumbul Jafri & team – Oldenburg Hearing Health Record (OHHR)
The Oldenburg Hearing Health Record (OHHR) contains curated research data from the field of hearing health. The freely accessible data set covers a wide range of measurements, such as subjective measures, audiological tests, cognitive measures and demographic information. With its standards-oriented data structure, open licensing, extensive documentation, and ready-to-use tools, the OHHR offers a valuable resource for interdisciplinary hearing research. It also serves as an example of how medical data can be shared in an ethically and legally sound manner. Researchers from the Hearing4all Cluster of Excellence at the University of Oldenburg and Hörzentrum Oldenburg were involved in curating and publishing the data.
OHHR dataset:
Zenodo, https://zenodo.org/records/15727482
Scientific publication (preprint):
OHHR – The Oldenburg Hearing Health Repository
Sumbul Jafri, Daniel Berg, Mareike Buhl, Matthias Vormann, Samira Saak, Kirsten C. Wagener, Christiane M. Thiel, Andrea Hildebrandt, Birger Kollmeier
medRxiv 2025.03.30.25324761; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.30.25324761
Learn more about the UGO Open Science Award
Photo: Sumbul Jafri and Dr. Giso Grimm at the „Inverse Hearing Throne“ – University of Oldenburg
