| 115 »The environment is very supportive, also when it comes to your career goals Oticon wants to boost you and give you opportunities « Zuzana Jelčicová ABOUT AUDIO EXPLORERS Audio Explorers is a competition for engineering students within the fields of electronic, mechanical and software engineering The partici- pants must come up with solutions for at least one of the three posed challenges The prize is a trip to New York with Oticon Read more at oticon global/about/ jobs/oticon/audio-explorers Where technology leads to better lives ADVERTISEMENT As a high school student in her home country, Slovakia, Zuzana Jelčicová was excited about applying research and making a positive impact. This brought her straight to Denmark and Oticon. algorithm-hardware optimization, where I first developed neural network algorithms that save power by skipping computations and then designed a hardware accelerator to execute such algorithms « In 2016, during her bachelor’s degree in ICT engineering at VIA University College in Horsens, Zuzana decided to participate in Oticon’s Audio Explorers competition As one of the 25 winners, she went on a trip to New York with Oticon »It was an amazing opportunity We collected noise data, and we visited Oticon’s headquarters and research site in New Jersey We learned about Oticon’s values and how the company operates, and I got the gut feeling that I wanted to work there, « she recalls SAVING POWER IN HEARING AIDS Consequently, Zuzana landed a student job at Oticon’s global headquarters outside of Copenhagen She worked there during her master’s degree in computer science and engineering at DTU and wrote her thesis in cooperation with the company: »I worked on how to fit neural networks into hearing aids I got so excited about it that I arranged for an industrial PhD with Oticon and DTU Hearing aids are small and have tiny batteries I focused on NO TWO DAYS ARE THE SAME – BUT EVERY DAY MAKES SENSE Zuzana finished her PhD in March 2023 and was immediately hired as a fulltime Digital IC Engineer IC stands for integrated circuits: »We design the tiny chips that go in the hearing aids – they should be efficient and use as little power as possible. It involves design, verification, research and development, and no two days are the same Working at the forefront of technology – which we do at Oticon – is exciting to me At the same time, the technology is used to improve people’s lives What we are doing makes sense, « she says, adding: »Every day, I look forward to working on my tasks with my colleagues I learn a lot from them, as they are skilled experts who are very willing to help – and I consider many of them as my friends In general, the environment is very supportive, also when it comes to your career goals Oticon wants to boost you and give you opportunities «
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