Holland High Tech Competition 2021 won by Judith Homberg, Bernhard Englitz and Lucas Noldus

Animal experiments have enabled many cures. However, animals are precious and their use should be reduced. In neuroscience, high tech can optimize experiments to maximize the information gain. DCN/DCMN researchers Judith Homberg, Bernhard Englitz and Lucas Noldus have recently won the Holland High Tech Competition 2021, which provides seed funding for developing a prototype of a multisensory tracking system that can help reduce the use of animals in both academia and industry. In their project 'UltraEx' they combine a high-density microphone array with embedded computing and AI programming to precisely localize animal vocalizations and score their content for emotional distress. This real-time and low-cost solution will help researchers and companies  significantly reduce the number of animals and their distress as well as improve the precision of analysis.