Keynote Speakers

Chadwan Al-Yaghchi

High-resolution manometry in dysphagia (Thursday 5 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)

Marja Asikainen

Screentime and speech and language development (Friday 6 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Professor Manohar Bance

Gene therapies for hearing loss (Thursday 5 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Professor Bance is the inaugural Professor of Otology and Skull Base Surgery at the University of Cambridge, appointed in 2017. Prior to that, he was Professor and Chair of the Division of Otolaryngology at Dalhousie University in Canada. He trained in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery in Toronto and at UCLA, finishing his training in 1995. He was on the Faculty at the University of Toronto in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery from 1996 to 2001, when he moved to Dalhousie University.

Furthermore, Professor Bance is a surgeon-scientist and leads the SENSE lab in Cambridge, where he remains clinically active in all areas of Otology and Neurotology. He is the Chair of the British Cochlear Implant Group, a past president of the Royal Society of Medicine Section of Otology, and a Lifetime Achievement Award recipient from the Canadian Society of Otolaryngology. His professional memberships include CORLAS, the American Otology Association, the American Neurotology Association, and he has previously served as Scientific Officer for the Politzer Society.

Professor Bance has published 247 peer-reviewed papers, several textbook chapters, and has trained dozens of PhD, Masters, and Postdoctoral students, as well as 37 Clinical Fellows over the years.

In 2022, he performed the first-in-human gene therapy for hearing loss, the first outside of China as part of the CHORD trial. He is also the Chief Investigator for this hearing loss gene therapy trial and runs the Genetic Hearing Loss Clinic in Cambridge.

Guillermo Campos

New Insights on Laryngeal Anatomy (Saturday 7 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Lady Catherine Cantor-Cutiva

The State of the Art on Occupational Voice: Challenges and Achievements (Friday 6 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)

Sabine Crestani

Chronic cough (Saturday 7 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Philippe DeJonckere

Bioengineering on voice onset (Saturday 7 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Associate Professor Dr Ilter Denizoglu, MD, PhD, MSc

Muscle-specific voice therapy (Thursday 5 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)

• Vocology Centre (Founder & Director)
• Tinaztepe University Faculty of Health Sciences, Speech Language Therapy Division (University Lecturer of Clinical Vocology)
• Dokuz Eylül University State Conservatory Vocal Arts Department, Main Art Division of Opera (University Lecturer of Pedagogical Vocology)

His medical work is exclusively on phonosurgery, voice therapy, and singing voice therapy. His research and development process focuses on the medical, biophysical and musical aspects of the human voice. He has been devising new devices for voice therapy and vocal training, and tools and surgical techniques for phonosurgery as well. Based on Sihvo’s LaxVox Tube Exercise; he has structured the DoctorVox Voice Therapy and Vocal Training Program with its devices. He is an amateur singer and interested in vocal music in various approaches (Singing pedagogy, musical acoustics). He prepared the curriculum of the pedagogical vocology course and has been teaching since 2008 in conservatories. Likewise, he also prepared the clinical vocology course curriculum and teaches in the language and speech therapy department. His book ‘Textbook of Clinical Vocology’ has been published in January 2020.

Associate Professor Olga Dlouha, MD, PhD

Analysis of Auditory Processing Disorder (APD) in children with sensory developmental dysphasia (Friday 6 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Olga Dlouha has specialized in developmental speech-language disorders (DSLD) and auditory processing disorders (APD). She has studied the electrophysiological evaluation of hearing (brainstem and cortical auditory evoked potentials) and has cooperated in the development of new speech audiometry techniques, including dichotic and sentence intelligibility in babble noise tests. She has provided care for at-risk children such as high-risk preterm newborns with very low birthweights. She is former Head of Dept. of Phoniatrics of the First Faculty of Medicine of Charles University and General University Hospital in Prague.

Professor Ahmed Geneid

Management of unilateral vocal fold immobility (Thursday 5 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Ahmed Geneid is adjunct professor, laryngologist and phoniatrician. He is a head of department in Helsinki University Hospital of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. Prof. Geneid served before as president and founding member of Finnish Laryngological Society and president of Union of the European Phoniatricians. Currently he is vice-president and founding member of the International Association of TransVoice Surgeons.

He leads a multidisciplinary team specifically focused on dealing with voice and swallowing patients. Prof. Geneid authored over 75 peer-reviewed international articles and chapters of textbooks. In addition, he teaches regularly on different laryngology and phonosurgery topics. Prof. Geneid is merited as Finland’s ENT doctor of the year 2020 by Finnish association of Otorhinolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery. He also received different awards as best presenter for two times by Finnish association of Otorhinolaryngology- Head and Neck Surgery.

Professor Markus Hess, MD, PhD

Glottoplasty in male-to-female transgender surgery (Friday 6 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)

Prof. Markus Hess, MD, PhD is an otolaryngologist and phoniatrician specializing in laryngology, phonosurgery, and professional voice disorders. He is the Head of the first Voice Clinic in Germany (The Medical Voice Center).

In addition to his clinical role, Prof. Hess is deeply involved in leadership and academic organizations. He serves as the chairman of the Pan-European Voice Conference (PEVOC), the founder of the European Academy of Voice (EAV), and is a past President of CoMeT. His other notable positions include founder of the German Society of Phonosurgery, President of the International Association of Transvoice Surgeons (IATVS), and Secretary General of the International Association of Phonosurgery (IAP).

Renowned for his pioneering work, Prof. Hess introduced blue laser technology to laryngology. He is highly experienced in minimally invasive phonomicrosurgery and office-based surgery.

Throughout his career, he has made significant contributions to the field through presentations at international conferences, hands-on workshops, and instructional courses. Prof. Hess is also an active member of various editorial boards and scientific committees and has authored numerous peer-reviewed articles in prestigious professional journals and textbooks.

Peter Hubka

Complex Reorganizations in the Auditory System after Bilateral and Unilateral Deafness – Clinical Implications (Saturday 7 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Peter Hubka is an auditory neuroscientist interested primarily in understanding the principles of neuroplasticity and exploring its potential for neurorehabilitation in the auditory system. We study the interplay between the auditory activation, coding, and neuromodulation to achieve controlled functional recovery in hearing disorders following peripheral correction with hearing aids or cochlear implants.

Peter Hubka is currently leading a joined lab at the Faculty of Medicine at Comenius University, Slovak Academy of Sciences, and University Hospital in Bratislava, Slovakia. He obtained a master’s degree from the Slovak Technical University (1992) and a doctoral degree from the Comenius University (2005) in Bratislava, Slovakia. Peter has studied the consequences of auditory deprivation in an animal model of binaural and unilateral congenital deafness on the functional and structural properties of adult auditory neuronal networks at the J. W. Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main (2000-2002), University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (2007-2009), and Hannover Medical School (2009-2024), Germany.

Professor Andrej Kral, MD, PhD

Congenital hearing loss requires treatment within the first year of life (Thursday 5 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

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.

Peter Kummer

Congenital Cytomegalovirus infection (cCMV): challenge and opportunity in the diagnosis and treatment of early childhood hearing loss (Thursday 5 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)

Professor Aude Lagier, MD, PhD

Cough assessment in swallowing disorders (Friday 6 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

My specialisation in ENT (2004–2010) and the four years of fellowship that followed were focused on phoniatrics, laryngology and anatomy in Marseille (France). I spent 6 months in Rouen to learn laryngeal reinnervation techniques. I then became an assistant professor of anatomy and laryngology in Marseille (2014–2016) before moving to Liege (Belgium). I am currently working as a supervisor at the University Hospital of Liège (since 2016) and I am a professor at the Department of Anatomy at the University of Liège. My doctoral thesis was entitled “Experimental approach to the collision between the vocal folds during phonation: studies in vivo and on excised human larynges”.

My fields of interest are the anatomy and physiology of the voice and swallowing, the diagnosis and treatment of voice and swallowing disorders, neuro-laryngology including the diagnosis and treatment of impaired vocal fold mobility, and the laryngological aspects of neurological disorders (neurological dysphonia, dysarthria and dysphagia).

Vlasta Lungova, RNDr, PhD

Stem cells in the vocal folds (Saturday 7 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Vlasta Lungova, RNDr, PhD, is a Scientist in the Department of Surgery, Division of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, at University of Wisconsin–Madison, USA. Her journey in voice research began in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Jan Švec at Palacký University Olomouc, Czech Republic. In 2013, she moved to the United States to join the laboratory of Prof. Dr. Susan Thibeault at UW–Madison.

Recently, she co-received a five-year research grant from the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, USA, which emphasizes the role of vocal fold epithelial stem cells in maintaining epithelial homeostasis and investigates the mechanisms underlying the formation of vocal fold hyperplastic lesions.

Dr. Lungova's research has been published in several prestigious scientific journals, including Nature Communications, Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences, Disease Models and Mechanisms, and Development. Her work focuses on the guided differentiation of induced pluripotent stem cells into vocal fold cell lineages, with applications in clinical and pharmaceutical research. Additionally, she investigates the mechanisms underlying laryngeal and vocal fold development in humans and transgenic mouse models. Her work aims to advance the understanding of congenital laryngeal disorders, disease- and aging-related laryngeal pathologies while paving the way for tissue-engineering strategies to create neo-vocal fold tissue.

Philipp Mathmann

Fascinating results of the world's first low-threshold hearing screening program for people with intellectual disabilities (N=1050) (Saturday 7 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Philipp Mathmann

New perspectives on psychogenic voice disorders (research protocol involves MRI-Spectroscopy, fMRI and therapeutic interventions) (Thursday 5 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Joachim Müller

Consideration for an initial results of the totally implantable Cochlea Implant (Friday 6 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Dirk Mürbe

Phonosurgery in artistic voice (Friday 6 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Rodica Elena Muresan

Presbyphagia versus dysphagia in elderly (Friday 6 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Katrin Neumann

Developmental language disorders (Thursday 5 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Stephen O'Leary

Electrophysiology in CI and hearing preservation (Friday 6 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Enrico Piccirillo

Cochlear implantation in vestibular schwannoma (Thursday 5 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)

Justin Roe

Pre-habilitation in managing Dysphagia in H&N cancers (Thursday 5 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

John Rubin

Looking after singers, psychological perspectives (Friday 6 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Jan Rusz

Voice analysis with AI and machine learning (Friday 6 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)

Jan Rusz's research activities are directed towards development of speech-based digital biomarkers with aim to provide more insights into pathophysiology of neurological diseases and gain new sensitive markers of progression for future neuroprotective trials. The main theme of his research is the multidisciplinary quantitative analysis of speech systems with a background in movement disorders, data analysis, machine learning and digital signal processing. He contributed to a range of scientific problems related to speech and language disorders mainly associated with basal ganglia dysfunction and cerebellum as well as other aspects of movement disorders such as bradykinesia, gait and eye movements.

Professor Josef Schlömicher-Thier, h.c.Dr

Some thoughts about laryngology from the viewpoint as Singer (Thursday 5 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Josef Schlömicher-Thier was born 1954 in Styria, He began his Voice Training as a Bariton at the Conservatorium of Music in 1982–1986 and at University of Music and Dramatic Art in Graz in 1986–1990 and started his musical career in 1990 in Graz in the Ensemble of the Opera in Graz .After finishing his Degree in Medicine at the Karl Franzens University of Graz, he was trained as a General Practitioner in Graz and Leoben and became a Specialist in ENT at the Main Hospital in Salzburg and for occupational Medicine in Vienna. Since 1996 he has the Responsibility as a Consultant Doctor of the Salzburg Festival for the Voice Care of the Artists and for the Occupational Medicine of all the employed Persons. In particular, he organized several international Meetings in Salzburg, focussing on the interdisciplinary Care of the professional Voice and Phonosurgery since 1995. As a guest Lector, Josef Schlömicher-Thier works in Salzburg at the University of Music Mozarteum and at the Department of Neuro-Linguistics at the Paris Lodron University. He is married with Luise, Dentist and has four Children, Markus 35 (Cardiac Surgeon) Thomas 33 (Master of Engineering) Johanna 24a, (Songwriter), Clemens 22 (Student of Engineering) He is a Member Collegium Medicorum Theatri (CoMeT) and the founder of the Austrian Voice Institute 1996. From 2009 to 2013, he was a Member of the Salzburg Parliament and Health Care Expert of the Socialist Party of Salzburg. Since 1996 he works in his ENT Office and got 2015 the official license for the International Voice Center Austria of the Salzburg government. In October 2021, he was awarded the Title of Professor honoris causa by the Austrian Federal President Van der Bellen.

Vidhyadharan Sivakumar

Onco Phagosurgery – Concepts in Surgical Management of Head & Neck Cancer patients with Dysphagia (Thursday 5 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Jan Svec, PhD

Mucosal waves on the vocal folds: Insights and Updates (Saturday 7 June 2025, 10:00–10:30)

Jan G. Švec, Ph.D. is an internationally renowned Czech physicist performing basic and clinical research on production of human voice. His is interested in better understanding the basic mechanisms and principles of voice production and in transferring the basic knowledge to clinical practice and to voice pedagogy. He holds a MSc degree in fine mechanics and optics and PhD degrees in biophysics as well as in medical sciences. He has worked as a research scientist at the Center for Communication Disorders (Medical Healthcom) in Prague, the Czech Republic, at the National Center for Voice and Speech in Denver, CO, USA and at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Currently he is at the Palacky University Olomouc, the Czech Republic and serves as an associate research scientist at the Voice and Hearing Centre Prague. He designed videokymography, the method for high-speed visualization of vocal-fold vibrations, which is used for advanced diagnosis of voice disorders. His broad research interests include detecting voice disorders through laryngeal vibrations, acoustics, biomechanics, voice measurement methodology, singing voice and related fields. He collaborates with numerous research teams in Europe and USA and lectures worldwide. From 2004 to 2011, he served as the chairman of the Voice Committee of the International Association of Logopedics and Phoniatrics (IALP). In 2013 he was, together with Dr. J. Vydrová, the chair of the 10th Pan European Voice Conference (PEVOC 2013) in Prague.

Josef Syka

Development of the auditory system, its disorders and gene therapy (Saturday 7 June 2025, 09:30–10:00)

Virginie Woisard

Assessment of pharyngo-laryngeal efficiency (Friday 6 June 2025, 14:00–14:30)