VCCA 2026 – Awards
Celebrating Scientific Excellence

One of the main goals of the Virtual Conference on Computational Audiology is not only to disseminate excellent science, but also to recognise and encourage the researchers who are helping to shape the future of hearing research.

The VCCA Awards reflect our strong commitment to supporting emerging talent, recognising scientific excellence, and promoting innovative ideas that have the potential to advance the field of computational audiology. We hope these awards provide encouragement to continue developing ambitious research, foster new collaborations, and inspire the next generation of scientists.

It is therefore our great pleasure to announce the recipients of the VCCA 2026 Awards. On behalf of the Organising Committee and the Scientific Committee, we warmly congratulate this year’s awardees for their outstanding scientific contributions and thank them for helping make VCCA 2026 such an exceptional conference.

Best Podium Award – Joanna Luberadzka (Eurecat, Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya, Spain)
Presentation title: “An AI Voice Agent for Speech Communication Assessment”
Awarded for an outstanding oral presentation combining scientific originality, innovation, and exceptional clarity of communication. The Scientific Committee was particularly impressed by the novelty of the experimental approach and the originality of the research question. Despite being based on an initial dataset, the work opened exciting new directions for future research and exemplified the type of creative science that inspires new ideas across the community.

Best Poster Award – Rutendo Chatiza (Cambridge Hearing Group, MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom)
Presentation title: “Towards modelling the impact of spread of excitation on classical psychophysical paradigms with cochlear implant users”
Awarded for an outstanding poster presentation demonstrating scientific quality, rigour, and clear communication. As this was the first edition of VCCA to include a dedicated poster format, the Scientific Committee was delighted by the exceptional quality of the submissions. The winning poster stood out for the rigour and depth of the research, its potential applicability, and the clarity with which complex ideas were communicated.

Emerging Scientist Award – Miguel (Mickey) Temboury (Technical University of Denmark, Denmark)
Presentation title: “Inferring Cochlear Cell Damage From Auditory Evoked Potentials Using Physics-Informed Machine Learning.”
Awarded to an early-career researcher demonstrating exceptional scientific promise. The committee was particularly impressed by the methodological rigour of the work, the strength of its experimental design, and the outstanding clarity of the presentation. Beyond the quality of the science itself, the recipient demonstrated the communication skills and scientific maturity that characterise future leaders in our field.

Award Selection Procedure

In the interest of transparency, the VCCA 2026 Scientific Committee would like to describe the evaluation procedure used to select this year’s award recipients. The selection process consisted of three independent stages.

Stage 1 – Session Chair Nominations

Once all conference materials had been submitted, the Session Chairs reviewed the contributions assigned to their sessions and nominated candidates for each award. A single contribution could be nominated for more than one award.

Session Chairs evaluated contributions according to two criteria:

Scientific Impact: To what extent does this work advance knowledge in computational audiology or hearing science? Consider the originality of the idea, methodological quality, potential impact on the field, and overall scientific significance.
Clarity of Communication: How effectively is the research communicated? Consider the organisation of the presentation, clarity of explanations, quality of figures and visual material, accessibility to a multidisciplinary audience, and the presenter’s ability to convey the key messages of the work.

Stage 2 – Independent Scientific Committee Evaluation

The Scientific Committee was then divided into three independent evaluation panels, one for each award.

Each panel reviewed all nominated contributions using the same evaluation criteria and independently ranked their four preferred contributions in order of preference.

Stage 3 – Final Committee Deliberation

During a face-to-face virtual meeting, the Scientific Committee shortlisted the two or three strongest finalists for each award.

The ranking produced during Stage 2 was converted into a points-based system, while also considering how consistently each contribution had appeared among the top-ranked selections across independent evaluators.

The committee then viewed all finalist presentations together, followed by an open discussion during which the scientific strengths of each contribution were carefully considered.

Finally, a committee vote was held to determine the recipient of each award.

Acknowledgements

These awards would not have been possible without the generous support of the VCCA 2026 sponsors.

Their commitment to open, accessible, and high-quality hearing research allows us not only to organise this conference, but also to recognise and encourage outstanding scientific contributions from our community.

On behalf of the VCCA 2026 Organising Committee and Scientific Committee, we sincerely thank all our sponsors for making these awards possible.