Student Experience in a UTM-Industry Research Collaboration

September 2019 Newsletter Article

April Pereira, Solveig Voss, & Kathy Pichora-Fuller

Student View

 As a final-year undergraduate student in Psychology at UTM, I had already completed Independent Research Project (IRP) courses in labs on campus, but during my last term, I did an IRP as part of a university-industry research collaboration. For my IRP project in Winter 2019, I conducted a research project with a team including Professor Pichora-Fuller in the Psychology Department at UTM and industry researchers at Sonova. The research was conducted to guide the

development of new products for people with hearing loss. I worked closely with Solveig Voss from the Sonova to set up and run experiments at UTM and at local hearing clinics. I learned how academic and industry approaches were synergistic in the process of defining questions, finding answers, and getting the work done from the beginning to the end of the study. I learned that research can answer real questions that are important not just for theory but also for developing relevant real-world solutions to the problems people confront in everyday life. We tested people’s ability to hear in the lab, but then we literally took our research to the street where we tested how people could hear with new technologies while they were on the move walking in the community. Witnessing and participating in this collaboration was challenging as we worked through taking the research project from the lab to the real-world. We learned together as a team and we were able to meet the challenges of innovation and complete the project on time. It was immensely satisfying to discover valuable new knowledge that could change the world as new products are developed.

Industry Partner View

Sonova is an innovation leader in the global hearing care market. Professor Pichora-Fuller has been working with our company on research projects for over a decade. In Fall 2019, we will open the new Innovation Centre Toronto as a division of Sonova Canada Inc. We will be located close to UTM and hope that the student IRP project completed by April Pereira this year will be the first of many student learning opportunities with us. The recent project involved investigating speech-in-noise understanding in the real world. Professor Kathy Pichora-Fuller’s extensive experience in aging and hearing research were key assets for developing thorough research protocols based on the university’s proven best practices. Her expertise complemented our expert knowledge as a developer and manufacturer of the technologies for people who have hearing loss. For data collection, staff from our clinics in the community worked closely with April Pereira, a student in Psychology at UTM. Preliminary lab-based experiments at UTM, as well as the student’s experience conducting various screening tests and the community-based experiments were critical to the project’s success. However, this project required more than just experience interacting with participants. It also required project management and team skills. Everyone involved leaned in to make sure the project would be a success. As a manufacturer of medical devices, evaluation is an important part of developing new technologies. Teaming up with people equally excited to investigate the expected benefits of this technology is what keeps this collaboration fun and rewarding! We are very happy about the successful collaboration with the University of Toronto and look forward to future projects!

Professor’s View

 This was learning at its best for all of us. Of course, the project would not have been a success without the time and dedication of our volunteers from the community who helped us to connect our lab-based work to their lives in the community.