Pursuing hearing with steerable electromagnetic fields
Backyard Creators is developing a non-invasive approach to restore hearing for severe-to-profound loss without surgery and without an internal implant.
We're testing a question most have written off: can hearing be restored without surgery or an implant, using electromagnetic fields alone? That investigation is where we are today.
Today, restoring severe-to-profound hearing means surgery.
The cochlear implant is one of modern medicine’s great successes, it has restored hearing for hundreds of thousands of people. But it reaches only a fraction of those who could benefit. It requires surgery and a permanent internal device, which puts it out of reach for many - whether by candidacy, or by choice.
Backyard Creators is building a non-surgical path to the same goal: restoring hearing for severe-to-profound loss "no incision, no internal implant " so the option stays open to people for whom surgery isn't.
A multichannel, focused, controllable electromagnetic field.
We are investigating whether multiple electromagnetic-field sources can interfere constructively at a single depth on creating a focused, steerable stimulation point inside the cochlea. The idea: by tuning each channel, we could move that focal point across auditory regions, entirely from outside the body.
Interfering channels are designed to concentrate stimulation where it's needed — not across the whole head.
By tuning each channel, we aim to steer a focused stimulation point using EMF physics.
A coordinated array is designed to deliver spatial resolution no single external source could achieve.
An experiment-driven framework
We don't guess. Every hypothesis is tested in computational multiphysics and on the bench — with agentic tooling and scientific experts speeding the loop from hypothesis to experiment. We validate against real data from our physical EM lab, and move step by step, from simulation toward the clinic.
Scientific agents help move from literature to hypothesis and compare simulation against bench results - working alongside our scientific experts
Applied computational physics modeling the fields, tested against our physical EM-lab prototypes.
Physical benches confirm — or reject — what the models predict.
Auditory electrophysiology in in-vivo models.
The goal: hearing restored non-invasively — with further clinical applications to explore beyond.
We take our work to the people who can challenge it
We are not publishing from behind a desk — we take our approach directly to the scientific community. At conferences and in conversation with researchers across the fields our work touches, we lay out our thinking and let experts push back on it.
Focused, steerable field physics in biological tissue
Electrophysiology of the cochlea and auditory pathway
Transducer fabrication and advanced signal processing
Electromagnetic field physics. Where we sharpen the engineering limits of steering and put our internal physics results up for scrutiny.
Auditory neuroscience & cochlear implants. Where we exchange our stimulation approach in clinical hearing-restoration reality.
Participation in the international symposium of the Hearing4all cluster of excellence.
69th International Congress of Hearing Aid Acousticians.
Electromagnetic field physics. Where we sharpen the engineering limits of steering and put our internal physics results up for scrutiny.
Auditory neuroscience & cochlear implants. Where we exchange our stimulation approach in clinical hearing-restoration reality.
Participation in the international symposium of the Hearing4all cluster of excellence.
69th International Congress of Hearing Aid Acousticians.
Backed to run real experiments
A home for audio deep tech — where our science meets world-class underlying acoustic and signal processing expertise
Our investors include founders and former CEOs of some of India's most successful technology and industrial companies - alongside Sound Invest, Sound Hub Denmark's investment arm, and non-dilutive government research grants funding the experiments that de-risk the science.