Professor Johannes M. Arend from the Aalto Acoustics Lab has received the 2026 Lothar-Cremer Award from the German Acoustical Society (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Akustik, DEGA) for his innovative and groundbreaking work in the fields of binaural technology and virtual acoustics.
The Lothar-Cremer Award is presented once a year by DEGA during the Annual German Conference on Acoustics (DAGA) to recognise outstanding achievements by early-career researchers in acoustics. Named after Lothar Cremer (1905–1990), a leading figure in technical acoustics, the award is regarded as one of the most prestigious early-career distinctions in acoustics in Germany and is currently endowed with €2,500.
Reflecting on the recognition, Arend said: ‘I am honoured to receive the Lothar-Cremer Award and to join the ranks of the distinguished scientists who have received it before me. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the DEGA board for recognizing my work, and to Profs. Christoph Pörschmann and Stefan Weinzierl for their continuous support throughout my academic career. I would also like to thank my many colleagues and collaborators for their inspiring cooperation and invaluable contributions over the years.’
As part of the recognition, Arend delivered a plenary keynote at DAGA 2026 in Dresden on 26 March 2026. His talk, titled ‘Technology Meets Perception: From Spatial Audio Research to Hearing Science in Extended Reality’, explored perceptually guided advances in virtual acoustics and binaural rendering. It highlighted how these developments enable interactive extended reality (XR) audio and new approaches to functional hearing assessment and hearing science in general.
Programme with plenary lectures and abstract:
Information on 2026 award:
The Aalto Acoustics Lab is a multidisciplinary research center focusing on audio processing and spatial sound technologies. The laboratory gathers professors and research teams from three different units: Department of Information and Communications Engineering, Department of Computer Science, and Department of Art and Media.
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