Keynote Speakers

Professor Andrej Kral, MD, PhD.

Andrej Kral, MD, PhD, is a Professor of Systems Neuroscience at Macquarie University and Professor of Auditory Neuroscience at Hannover Medical School where he holds the Chair in Experimental Otology.

A. Kral is specialized to auditory neurophysiology in animals and humans. His research interests include hearing loss, central effects of deafness for brain development and cognition, neuroplasticity, cochlear implants and neuroprosthetics. A. Kral serves as a chair of the PhD Program “Auditory Sciences” at the Hannover Medical School and is member of the editorial board of Hearing Research. In 2017 he has been elected a member of the German National Academy of Science and in 2018 of the Collegium Oto-Rhino-Laryngologicum Amicitiae Sacrum. He received the 2024 Pioneer Award in Basic Science from the Association for Research in Otolaryngology for his fundamental work on understanding brain plasticity after hearing loss.

With H. Maier and F. Aplin he published a textbook on neuroprosthetics (“Prostheses for the Brain: Introduction to Neuroprosthetics”, 2021, Academic Press) and with A. N. Popper and R. R. Fay edited the volume on “Deafness” (vol. 47, 2013) of the Springer Handbook of Auditory Research. His lab received funding, among others, from German Research Society, National Science Foundation, German Academic Exchange Service, European Union, Oticon Foundation and cochlear implant industry.