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Name: Eleni GAITANI
Current position: Master student at Technical Mathematics
Master thesis topic: “Impact of single and combined electrode array activation on the dynamic range of healthy and degenerated cochlear nerve fibers”
Starting date: Oktober 2025
Supervisor: Prof. Frank RATTAY

The excitation of auditory nerve fibres (ANFs) in the cochlea via intracellular or extracellular input is a significant tool to observe signal propagation and justify deformations of the cochlea or degenerations of neurons. The Hodgkey-Huxley models offer a good representation of changes in the membrane voltage and have been inherited in the computational work in the field of cochlear implants. Such implants replace the function of destroyed inner hair cells, that convert acoustic signals to electrical impulses and can be placed up to a depth of 720° in the cochlea to stimulate those deactivated cells and degenerated neurons. 

In my master thesis I try to investigate the influence of a single or combined excitation at different citations of cochlear neural cells for three different cases: that of a healthy, a part-degenerated and a completely degenerated part of the cell, and most specifically at the peripheral process (dendrite). 

I started my master studies in Technical Mathematics and I chose the Applied Mathematics module as I had already known that I wanted to expand my knowledge in acoustics and gain a broader insight of the applications and work areas in this background. After I had had courses in hearing theory, brain modelling and computational methods in neural engineering, I was convinced that I wanted to write my thesis with this focus. 

It is fascinating to try and make good computational models that depict the reality and hopefully help make a change for people with hearing impairments or for those concepts to be used in other works or even scientific fields.
Looking to the future, I hope I can expand my knowledge further on an academic or scientific level and develop computational results in this domain for CI users who listen or perform or heal through music.