Ingeborg J. Hochmair is CEO, CTO and co-founder of MED-EL with its global Headquarters in Innsbruck, Austria.
Ingeborg J. Hochmair holds Dipl.Ing. and Dr.tech degrees in Electrical Engineering and a venia legendi in Biomedical Engineering from the Technical University of Vienna, where she, together with Erwin Hochmair, developed the very first microelectronic multichannel cochlear implant, implanted in December 1977 in Vienna. The cochlear implant is the first replacement of a human sense, the sense of hearing. After research work at the Institute for Electronics in Medicine at Stanford University, USA and at the Inst. of Applied Physics at the Univ. of Innsbruck she cofounded the company MED-EL, hired the first employees in 1990 and as the CEO and CTO grew the company into a leading global hearing implant group with 30 daughter companies and offices and a team of more than 2000 people supporting implant centers in 123 countries.
With its innovative neuroprosthetic technologies MED-EL now helps individuals of all ages to overcome hearing loss and to restore other body functions that are a barrier to communication and impair the quality of life. Translational research and biomedical engineering activities are the basis for the innovations.
Ingeborg J. Hochmair has (co-) authored 120 publications and numerous patents.
She received 3 honorary doctorate degrees in medicine from the Technical University of Munich, the Medical University of Innsbruck and the University of Bern.
In 2013 she won the Lasker DeBakey clinical medical Research Award and in 2015 the Russ prize of the US National Academy of Engineering, all for the pioneering work in the area of restoration of the sense of hearing in the deaf.