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Karolina Smeds

Karolina Smeds has an MSc in Engineering Physics from KTH, Stockholm, Sweden, and an MSc in Audiology from the University of Southampton, Great Britain. She has been working as an engineer at the Manilla School for deaf children in Stockholm and has been lecturing at the Audiology program at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. At the audiology program she has been responsible for technically oriented courses such as physics, signals and systems, psychoacoustics, hearing aid technology and hearing aid fitting.

Karolina Smeds carried out her PhD work at KTH under the supervision of professor Arne Leijon and in 2004 she got her PhD with the thesis, “Less is more? Loudness aspects of prescriptive methods for nonlinear hearing aids”. Prescriptive methods were evaluated for hearing-impaired people with mild to moderate hearing loss. The main result was that generic prescriptive methods available today generally prescribe higher gain than members of this group of hearing-aid wearers prefer. A summary of the thesis can be found at http://www.diva-portal.org/kth/theses/abstract.xsql?dbid=3767 .

In 2006, when Widex decided to establish the new ORCA Europe research group, Karolina Smeds was asked to be the director.

Niklas Bergman

Niklas has a BSc in Medical Technology from the University of Umeå, Sweden. Niklas did his compulsory military service as a system technician for field hospitals. He has worked as a technical audiologist for two years and as a medical engineer for one year. For a period of four years Niklas was working as a sound technician and teacher for sound technicians in Cyprus and the Sudan. Before joining the ORCA Europe research group, he worked as a research engineer at the Ahlsén Research Institute where he participated in the technical development, giving technical support and performing technical maintenance.

Niklas Bergman joined the team at ORCA Europe in September 2006. He has been working with the process of getting all the equipment and technical facilities together, and is now working as a Research Engineer.

Josefina Larsson

Josefina Larsson has a BSc in Audiology (Leg. Audionom) from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and a BSc in Phonetics from the Stockholm University.

After graduation in 2003 she started to work clinically with hearing aid rehabilitation at a clinic in Stockholm. She has also been lecturing in audiology diagnostics at the Audiology program at Örebro University and prior to joining the team at ORCA Europe she worked with hearing aid development as a research audiologist at a hearing aid company in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In December 2006 she returned to Stockholm and joined the ORCA Europe research group as a Research Audiologist.

Sofia Hertzman

Sofia Hertzman has a BSc in Audiology (Leg. Audionom) from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

After graduation in 2003 she started working as an audiologist at the hearing aid clinic in Visby and later worked with aural rehabilitation for adults in Stockholm. In May 2007 she started working at ORCA Europe in Stockholm as a Research Audiologist.

ORCA at other locations

Widex is financing another ORCA laboratory located in Chicago, USA. Director of research is Dr. Francis Kuk.