- Graeme Clark, an Australian doctor who was motivated to pioneer the first multi-channel implant by watching his deaf father struggle in his daily life.
- Austria electrical engineer Ingeborg Hochmair worked with her husband, Erwin Hochmair, to develop their own multi-channel implant in Europe, eventually starting MED-EL--one of the "big three" cochlear implant makers.
- Blake Wilson, co-director of the Duke Hearing Center. He is strategy advisor for MED-EL and is credited with inventing many of the critical signal processing strategies used in implants today.
- Michael M. Merzenich, a neuroscientist and professor of otolaryngology at the University of California at San Francisco, established some of the fundamental design for Advanced Bionics.
A ceremony will take place in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 24. There's more information from the National Academy of Engineering here.
