A Seattle startup born in a University of Washington lab just got a global stamp of approval: its co-founder, UW Ph.D. student Malek Itani, won one of the world's top honors in communications technology for AI that lets earbuds isolate a single voice in a noisy room.

The Marconi Society named Itani one of three 2026 Paul Baran Young Scholar Award recipients on Wednesday, Aug. 26, GeekWire reported.

The award recognizes scientists and engineers 27 or younger whose work helps connect the next billion people, according to the Marconi Society. Itani was chosen from a record pool of nominees.

The technology is practical. Itani's research focuses on cramming neural networks onto the low-power chips inside earbuds and hearing aids so they can perform real-time sound separation without cloud computing or heavy battery drain.

A user could amplify one companion's voice in a crowded restaurant, block out traffic noise, or create a localized "sound bubble" around themselves.

Itani works in the UW Mobile Intelligence Lab under Allen School professor Shyam Gollakota. Together they developed systems called IF-MLPNet and NeuralAids to make that separation possible on consumer hardware.

"I feel like I've hit a niche that's going to be so transformational, and it's going to be in billions of devices," Itani told GeekWire. "It's going to change the way we hear the world."

The award follows a fast year. Itani and Gollakota co-founded Hearvana in spring 2025 to commercialize the lab's discoveries.

The Seattle startup, incubated at the AI2 Incubator, raised $6 million in pre-seed funding in fall 2025, GeekWire reported at the time. Point72 Ventures and SCB 10X led the round, with participation from the Amazon Alexa Fund and several other investors.

Gollakota has a track record of spinning UW research into companies. He previously co-founded Sound Life Sciences, a breathing-monitor app maker that Google acquired in 2022, and Wavely Diagnostics, which uses a smartphone to detect ear infections.

Itani entered his Ph.D. program with a background in radio-frequency engineering and backscatter. Gollakota told the Allen School Blog that Itani "rapidly mastered audio signal processing and deep learning, which is very impressive." Itani also interned at Meta, where he worked on smart glasses.

Itani and the two other 2026 Young Scholars, Atsutse Kludze and Yiwen Song, will be formally recognized at the Marconi Awards Gala in San Francisco in November.