Jan Wouters

Jan Wouters is a Full Professor at KU Leuven's Faculty of Medicine within the Department of Neurosciences, where he serves as Head of Hearing Research and is an active member of the KU Leuven Brain Institute. His academic career spans multiple leadership roles including membership on the Council of the Faculty of Medicine and the Council of the Department of Neurosciences, as well as participation in the POC Logopedie en audiologie committee.

Professor Wouters' research focuses on auditory neuroscience with particular emphasis on cochlear implants, speech perception mechanisms, and developmental dyslexia. His work investigates how children with typical hearing and those using cochlear implants process speech in noisy environments, examines spatial hearing capabilities with bilateral implants, and explores neural processing differences in children at risk for dyslexia. His laboratory employs advanced techniques including electroencephalography (EEG) to measure auditory steady-state responses and develop objective fitting methods for cochlear implants.

Analysis of his recent publications reveals a strong interdisciplinary approach combining audiology, neuroscience, and educational psychology. His research shows consistent focus on translating neural measurements into clinical applications, particularly for pediatric populations. A notable trend is the development of novel assessment tools like the LIST-k for children's speech perception and the digit triplet test for school hearing screening, demonstrating his commitment to practical clinical solutions.

Professor Wouters actively supervises doctoral students and leads multiple significant research projects including 'Precision Electrode Neural Interface for Cochlear Implants' (2025-2029), 'Capturing early heterogeneity in dyslexia' (2024-2028), and 'Spatial hearing and bilateral cochlear implants' (2024-2028). His research group, the Experimental Oto-rhino-laryngology Research Group, operates from the ON2 Herestraat facility in Leuven and collaborates extensively with clinical and engineering departments across the university.