The Scientific Committee 2026 of this year’s International TRI Conference, directed by Prof. Birgit Mazurek and Prof. Berthold Langguth, developed the conference program, which was jointly organized by the Tinnitus Centre Charité and the Foudation‘s co-organising team. We are delighted, that several awards could be presented:

Professor Marlies Knipper was awarded with the Aage R. Møller-Award for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of tinnitus research.

Marlies Knipper is holding a professorship at the Hearing Research Center of the Ear, Nose, and Throat Clinic at Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen since 2008 and has been leading the research group “Molecular Physiology of Hearing” there since 1993.

Her work bridges the field of inner ear research and tinnitus, with a particular emphasis on auditory adaptation processes related to memory-requiring faciliation circuits using animal and human studies. Additionally, she explores the connection between auditory processing speed and auditory comprehension, since delayed processing potentially increases cognitive load and can lead to long-term health complications with a possible higher risk of dementia. She has made significant contributions to the field of age-related hearing loss research, aiming to enhance the detection and diagnosis of various forms of age-related speech discrimination loss. Prof. Knipper has also been spearheading various studies about tinnitus and hyperacusis focusing on the identification of objective measures and functional biomarkers to improve the validation of existing curative therapies and support the development of new treatments.

As a member of both the Leopoldina National Academy of Sciences (Halle/Saale) and the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin, Prof. Knipper holds prominent positions in the German scientific community.

The Scientific Committee of this year’s TRI Conference has also chosen to honor Susanne Staudinger with the “Special Prize for Outstanding Support of the TRI.”

Since 2006, the Tinnitus Research Initiative has been committed to fostering scientific innovation, collaboration, and the development of treatments to improve the lives of those affected by tinnitus. Susanne Staudinger has devoted herself wholeheartedly to this mission – not only as a team member of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the University of Regensburg since 2007, but above all as an invaluable network manager for the TRI, keeping all the threads together and ensuring that things continue to move forward. Additionally, she once again coordinated the activities of TRI members at the TRI Conference in Berlin this year, while also providing essential support in communications and with the invitations to this conference. We are sincerely grateful for this.

We were happy to host the Lifetime Achievement Award Ceremony of the Taiwan Tinnitus Association at this year’s TRI Conference. This award was presented to Dr. Jen-Tsung Lai, a distinguished figure with over three decades of clinical leadership and a pioneer in cochlear migraine research. His contributions have been instrumental in shaping modern tinnitus care in Taiwan.

Our thanks also go the American Tinnitus Association (ATA), which awarded five young scientist with The Best Poster Presentation Award submitted for the TRI Conference 2026. Four of them came to the award ceremony which was presented by Patrick Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of the ATA (USA), and Prof. Dr. Jinsheng Zhang, Professor and Chair, Department Communication Sciences and Disorders, and Professor and Research Director, Department Otolaryngology, Wayne State University (USA): Hongyu Lu (ENT Clinic Tübingen, DEU), Jude L. R. Barker (University of Nottingham, GBR), Gopika Satish (University of Pittsburgh, USA) and Emilia Kaniewska (University of Illinois Urbana-Champ, USA).

Finally, this year‘s Travel Grant donated by Tinnitus Quest was dedicated to talented early-career researchers, i.e. PhD students, who have completed their PhD within the past five years. Tom Naber received this Travel Grant 2026.