Eight-year-old Asha Daisy Hodgson has won a trip to Austria with her mum Genevieve to meet the MED-EL scientists and engineers who created her mother’s individual cochlear implant.
Asha, from Cowaramup, near Margaret River in Western Australia, was one of nine worldwide winners in MED-EL’s 2026 IDEASforEARS Children’s Invention Contest. More than 300 children from 25 countries took part in the competition.
The competition invites children to look at hearing technology from their own perspective and consider how it could work better.
The winners will visit MED-EL’s global headquarters in Innsbruck in June 2026 and learn more about hearing when they tour MED-EL’s interactive science museum, Audioversum.
Asha’s mum, Genevieve, who has single-sided deafness, has a MED-EL Synchrony cochlear implant recipient and was the inspiration behind Asha’s entry.
Gen let her three children interview her about any challenges she might experience in daily life. They each came up with their own creative solutions that might help her overcome these challenges.
Asha designed a ‘sleeping mask’ that connects to a monitor and vibrates to wake the wearer when it detects certain sounds. This would help her mum hear important sounds at night, waking her with gentle vibrations to alert her to anything she might otherwise miss such as a fire alarm or a baby crying.
Head judge of the competition, Mr Geoff Ball, inventor of MED-EL’s VIBRANT SOUNDBRIDGE active middle ear implant system , said what he loved about the ideas was how naturally human they were.
“Children do not overcomplicate things – they notice what is missing, what could be easier, what could be kinder,” he said in a media release. “They see the world differently, and that is a gift.
“IDEASforEARS shows us that innovation does not start with technology – it starts with curiosity, empathy, and the freedom to imagine something better.”
MED-EL and Microsoft are joining forces for the third year as the official technology partner of IDEASforEARS, using cutting edge tools to help young inventors communicate, create, and connect across languages and borders.
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