Harry Levitt, Ph. D.

Harry Levitt has been active for more than 40 years in the development of sensory aids for people with hearing loss. As a researcher at Bell Laboratories in the 1960's, he helped develop special-purpose telephones for people with hearing loss, in addition to his basic research in speech and hearing. After leaving Bell Laboratories, he headed the Digital Sensory Aids Laboratory at the City University of New York and was Director of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Hearing Enhancement from 1980 to 2000, when

he retired from academic life. In 2002, he founded Advanced Hearing Concepts, a research company dedicated to the application of digital technology to help people with hearing loss. Read My Quips was developed by Advanced Hearing Concepts under a research grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Dr Levitt played a prominent role in the development of the digital hearing aid and has developed advanced methods of digital signal processing for hearing aids, cochlear implants, and new methods of hearing measurement. He has similarly made significant contributions in applying digital technology for improving auditory rehabilitation and has received many awards for his research, including the Fletcher Award in Technical Application from the New York League for the Hard of Hearing (1975), World Rehabilitation Fund Fellow (l980), Winner, Johns Hopkins University National Search for Applications of Personal Computing to Aid the Handicapped (l981), Professional Achievement Award, New York City Speech-Hearing-Language Association (1984), Honors of the Society, New York State Speech-Hearing-Language Association (1985), Javits Neuroscience Investigator Award, National Institutes of Health (1988), Special Friend of People with Hearing Loss from Self Help for Hard of Hearing People, SHHH (1966), New York City Mayor’s Award for Excellence in Science and Technology (1999), Life Achievement Award, American Auditory Society (2001), and the James Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology, American Academy of Audiology (2006).