The Research Behind Engage

Immersive Hearing Technologies began as a research initiative at the University of Louisville in 2020, where a team of expert research scientists set out to better understand how individuals perceive sound through hearing aids in real-world settings.

That work produced a patent-pending audio rendering approach that can accurately reproduce what a given hearing aid technology sounds like for a specific pattern of hearing loss, across dynamic, real-world environments rather than a static clinical booth. It’s the technology that eventually became Engage.

What started in the lab quickly turned into something more practical: the same rendering approach used for research could help solve a very real problem in hearing care, giving patients a way to truly understand how hearing devices perform in real-world environments before making a purchase decision.

The company was officially founded in 2023 to bring that work out of the lab and into clinics, co-founded by Dr. Matthew Neal and Dr. Pavel Zahorik.