Competition for this year's vacation scholarships was extremely tough and Deafness Research UK is very pleased to announce that this year’s awards will go to four, highly promising young students.

This year's Pauline Ashley Prize has been awarded to Dr Lucy Anderson, a junior postdoctoral researcher working at University College London's Ear Institute.

The Pauline Ashley Prize 2007 has been awarded to Sam Irving, a young researcher at the MRC Institute for Hearing Research in Nottingham, who is looking for the region of the brain that helps us to hear someone in a noisy place, such as a party or bar, and is responsible for 'training' the brain to hear better in these situations.

A Cambridge student developing a new technique to fine-tune hearing aids in young children has won the 2006 Pauline Ashley Prize.