Image from the cover: March 2009.

Image: Frog amphibian papilla stained for myosin VI (green) and otoferlin (red) - Quiñones et al., 2012

Image from the Cover: August 2015.

Image from the Cover: February 2013.

Image from the Cover: June 2013

Image: Anuran inner ear structures from Xenopus laevis, Rana pipiens, Eleutherodactylus limbatus - Mason et al., 2015

Image from the Cover: June 2015.

Image from the Cover: August 2012.

Image from the Cover: February 2018.

Image: Utricular otoconia from wild-type mice - Boyle et al., 2021.

Image: Temporal bone whole-mount from a PLP/CreERT::ROSA26-LacZ mouse - Gómez-Casati et al., 2010.

Image: Isolated guinea pig OHC - Hallworth et al., 2007

Image from the Cover: June 2009.

Image from the Cover: December 2009.

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Welcome to the Journal of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology!

JARO is a peer-reviewed journal that publishes research topics in relation to the content of the Annual ARO Mid-Winter Meeting with a focus on the auditory and vestibular systems.

Quotation

There is opportunity for the ARO community to determine how their data will be shared and how they wish to access data, perhaps through an ARO-supported mechanism. We understand that while there may not be an ideal common approach for all research areas within otolaryngology, there is an exciting opportunity for creating a resource(s) to promote the core science, diversity, integrity, collaboration, and education values of ARO.

EDITORIAL | AUGUST 2023 | ECKERT ET AL.

Click on the picture for a short bio.

Editor-in-Chief

Christopher R. Cederroth

Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

https://ki.se/en/fyfa/translational-auditory-neuroscience

@CederrothCR

 

Editorial Assistant

Lori Kunath, B.S.

 

Associate Editors

Michael Akeroyd

Hearing Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham, UK

 
  • auditory impairment
  • hearing aids
  • spatial hearing
  • psychophysics
  • fMRI

Victoria M Bajo

Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics, University of Oxford, UK

@vbajo

 
  • Auditory plasticity
  • Corticofugal loops
  • Optogenetics

Dwight E. Bergles

Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA

 
  • glia
  • development

Alan Brichta

School of Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

 
  • vestibular system
  • electrophysiology
  • nicotinic receptors

R. Michael Burger

Department of Biological Sciences, Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA, USA

 
  • central auditory neurophysiology
  • neuromodulation
  • spatial hearing

Catherine Carr

Department of Biology, University of Maryland, USA

@cemilycarr

 
  • sound localization
  • temporal processing
  • birds and reptiles

Monita Chatterjee

Auditory Prostheses and Perception Laboratory, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, USA

   

Alan Cheng

Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

 
  • hair cell development
  • Wnt signaling
  • regeneration

Benjamin T Crane

Department of Otolaryngology, University of Rochester, USA

 
  • vestibular rehabilitation
  • cochlear implants

Gary Curhan

Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

 
  • epidemiology
  • prevention

Sharon Curhan

Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

 
  • epidemiology
  • multi-omics
  • hearing loss
  • tinnitus

Alain Dabdoub

Department of Otolaryngology, University of Toronto, Canada

@LabDabdoub

 
  • regeneration
  • inner ear development
  • Wnt signaling

Paul Delano

Departments of Otolaryngology and Neuroscience, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

 
  • corticofugal projections
  • efferent system
  • hearing loss x cognition

Mark Eckert

Hearing Research Program, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Medical University of South Carolina, USA

 
  • age-related hearing loss
  • speech communication

Andreas H. Eckhard

Otopathology Laboratory, Department of Otolaryngology, Harvard Medical School, USA.

 
  • Meniere's disease
  • vestibular
  • fluid homeostasis

Ana Belén Elgoyhen

Instituto de Investigaciones en Ingeniería Genética y Biología Molecular, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET ), Argentina

@AElgoyhen

 
  • olivocochlear efferents
  • noise-induced hearing loss
  • tinnitus

Jutta Engel

Center for Integrative Physiology and Molecular Medicine (CIPMM), School of Medicine at Saarland University, Germany

 
  • Ca2+ an K+ channels
  • inner and outer hair cells
  • development
  • afferent auditory pathway

Douglas Fitzpatrick

Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

 
  • Electrocochleography in cochlear implant subjects and animal models
  • Neuronal bases of sound localization performance

W. Robert J. Funnell

Departments of BioMedical Engineering and Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, McGill University, Canada

 
  • linear and nonlinear middle-ear mechanics
  • finite-element method
  • newborn hearing screening

Silvano Gallus

Department of Environmental Health Sciences, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Italy

@SilvanoGallus

 
  • epidemiology
  • systematic reviews

Jaime Garcia-Anoveros

Department of Anesthesiology, Northwestern University, IL, USA

@JaimeAnoveros

 
  • auditory nociception
  • hyperacusis
  • mouse genetics

Anne-Lise Giraud

Department of Basic Neurosciences, University of Geneva, Switzerland

@labgiraud

 
  • experimental neurophysiology
  • artificial neural networks
  • neural signal decoding
  • dynamical systems modeling

Nace Golding

Department of Neuroscience and Center for Learning and Memory, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

 
  • auditory computations
  • dendritic processing

Michael Heinz

Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, and Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

@HeinzLab_Purdue

 
  • Neural correlates of normal and impaired auditory perception
  • noise-induced hearing loss
  • precision auditory neuroscience
  • models of auditory signal processing and perception

Stefan Heller

Department of Otolaryngology - Head & Neck Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

 
  • stem cells
  • regeneration

Ronna Hertzano

Department of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, University of Maryland, USA

 
  • transcription regulation
  • transcriptomics 

Hiroshi Hibino

Division of Global Pharmacology, Department of Pharmacology, Osaka University, Japan

 
  • endolymph
  • hearing loss

Keiko Hirose

Department of Otolaryngology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

 
  • Immunity
  • inflammation
  • blood labyrinth barrier
  • macrophage
  • CX3CR1

Fatima Husain

Department of Speech and Hearing Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA

 
  • tinnitus
  • fMRI

Sung Huhn Kim

Yonsei University College of Medicine, South Korea

 
  • genetic peripheral vestibular disorders
  • Menière's disease
  • ion transport

Conny Kopp-Scheinpflug

Division of Neurobiology, Faculty of Biology, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany

 
  • electrophysiology
  • potassium channels
  • temporal processing

Francois Lallemend

Department of Neuroscience, Karolinska Institute, Sweden

@lallemend_f

 
  • neurons
  • molecular regulation

Berthold Langguth

Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Regensburg, Germany.

 
  • clinical trials
  • tinnitus
  • neuromodulation

Amanda Lauer

Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Center for Hearing and Balance, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

@Lauerlab

 
  • animal models of hearing loss
  • comparative hearing

Jose A. Lopez-Escamez

Department of Genomic Medicine, Centre for Genomics and Oncological Research (GENYO), Pfizer-University of Granada-Junta de Andalucía, PTS, Granada, Spain

 
 
  • Meniere's disease
  • tinnitus
  • hearing loss
  • genomics

Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda

Laboratorio de Audición Computacional y Psicoacústica, Instituto de Neurociencias de Castilla y León, University of Salamanca, Spain

 
  • nonlinear cochlear signal processing
  • hearing aids
  • cochlear implants

Brigitte Malgrange

GIGA-Stem Cells, Developmental Neurobiology Unit, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium

@bmalgrange

 
  • cochlear development
  • mouse models
  • stem cells

Colette McKay

The Bionics Institute of Australia, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

@Colette43711354

 
  • Cochlear Implant
  • fNIRS
  • psychophysics

Martin Meyer

Department of Psychology, University of Zürich, Switzerland

 
  • neuroimaging
  • tinnitus
  • speech processing

John C. Middlebrooks

Department of Otolaryngology, University of California at Irvine, USA

 
  • spatial hearing
  • cortical physiology

Arturo Moleti

Physics Department, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy

 
  • Cochlear Mechanics
  • Otoacoustic Emissions

Heidi Nakajima

Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Harvard Medical School, MA, USA

 
  • human auditory mechanics
  • middle-ear prostheses
  • acoustical stimulation of the cochlea

Patrick K.A. Neff

Institute of Bioengineering, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

 
  • cortical processing
  • tinnitus

Fumiaki Nin

Department of Molecular Physiology , Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan

 
  • cochlea
  • electrophysiology

Dáibhid Ó Maoiléidigh

Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

 
  • Computational Modeling
  • Hair Cell

Adrian Rees

Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

 
  • midbrain
  • electrophysiology
  • temporal processing

Lina A.J. Reiss

Department of Otolaryngology, Oregon Hearing Research Center, USA

@lina_reiss

 
  • cochlear implants
  • binaural fusion
  • pitch perception

Marta Roccio

Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland

@RoccioMarta

 
  • Stem cell Biology
  • Inner ear Biology
  • Organoids
  • Regeneration

Mark A. Rutherford

Department of Otolaryngology, Washington University in St. Louis, USA. 

 
  • ribbon synapse
  • ion channel
  • excitotoxicity

William Sedley

Biosciences Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

 
  • tinnitus
  • cortical plasticity

Su-Hua Sha

Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, USA  

 
  • ototoxicity
  • aging

Joseph Sollini

Hearing Sciences, Division of Clinical Neuroscience, University of Nottingham, UK

 
  • Neurophysiology
  • Optogenetics

George Spirou

Department of Otolaryngology, University of South Florida, USA

 
  • reviews
  • auditory brainstem
  • connectomics

Karen P Steel

Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, King’s College London, UK. 

 
  • human and mouse genetics
  • age-related hearing loss

Christoff Stieger

Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Basel, Switzerland.

 
  • middle ear mechanics
  • cochlear implants

Nicola Strenzke

Auditory Systems Physiology Group, Department of Otolaryngology and Institute for Auditory Neuroscience, University Medical Center, Göttingen, Germany

 
  • synaptopathy/neuropathy
  • electrophysiology
  • animal models of hearing loss
  • auditory nerve

Marcel van der Heijden

Department of Neuroscience, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

 
  • cochlear biophysics
  • binaural hearing
  • auditory masking

Barbara Vona

Institute of Human Genetics, University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany

@drbarbaravona

 
  • Genetics of hearing impairment
  • Genotype-phenotype correlations

Joseph Walton

Global Center for Hearing and Speech Research, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

 
  • electrophysiology
  • age-related hearing loss
  • animal behavior
  • tinnitus

Nathan Weisz

Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University of Salzburg, Austria

 
  • Fluctuating network states as predispositions of conscious perception
  • Interaction between brain oscillations and network-level states
  • Neural mechanisms of tinnitus
  • Online effects of neurostimulation

Robert H. Withnell

Department of Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences, Indiana University, IN, Bloomington, USA

 
  • otoacoustic emissions
  • middle ear mechanics

Former Associate Editors

Christian Lorenzi

Laboratoire des systèmes perceptifs (CNRS 8248), Département d'études cognitives, École normale supérieure de Paris, France

   

Xiaorui Shi

Oregon Hearing Research Center, Department of Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery, Oregon Hearing Research Center, USA.

 
  • cochlear blood flow
  • blood-labyrinth-barrier (BLB)
  • stria vascularis

 

 

Christopher R. Cederroth, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden

Biologist by training with 15 years of professional research experience in academia. His PhD, awarded in 2009 at the University of Geneva (Switzerland), aimed at understanding the effects and characterizing the molecular mechanisms of endocrine disruption mediated by phytoestrogens on sexual development, reproduction and metabolism. His work was awarded the Denber-Pinard prize from the University of Geneva and the Endocrinology Prize of the Swiss Endocrinology Foundation, and led to the creation of a start-up company Amazentis S.A. in the medical food sector. As a post-doc, he worked on hearing loss and tinnitus at the Rockefeller University (by Prof. Hudspeth) and at the Karolinska Institutet (by Prof. Canlon), where he developed his pre-clinical and clinical research on hearing loss and tinnitus. He was awarded the Research Prize “Hearing and Tinnitus” from the German Tinnitus Foundation (Charité), as well as the Geraldine Dietz Fox Young Investigator Award from the Association for Research in Otolaryngology. His research aims at bridging animal and human research in order to elucidate the molecular mechanisms causing auditory neuropathy, hearing loss and tinnitus, develop new objective measures, and therapeutic approaches for their treatment. He is also Honorary Associate Professor at the NIHR, Nottingham, UK.

 

Lori Kunath, B.S.

I am an Editorial Assistant who works for Parthenon Management Group in Brentwood, TN on a portfolio of journals (including JARO). I manage the processing of manuscripts from submission to acceptance utilizing multiple submission platforms while performing quality checks on submissions for adherence to requirements and compliance with publication policies. I assist in updating records within submission systems and email inquiries and chasers to authors, reviewers, and editors. I support the standardization of workflows, improve efficiencies, data/license collection. I also support and communicate with authors, editors, and reviewers, while troubleshooting where needed. In addition, I manage social media accounts that share and promote engaging content for target audiences.

 

Michael Akeroyd, Hearing Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Nottingham

Michael is Professor of Hearing Sciences at the University of Nottingham (UoN). Previously he did his PhD at the MRC Applied Psychology Unit in Cambridge, then postdocs at MRC Institute of Hearing Research (IHR) in Nottingham, University of Connecticut Health Centre, and the University of Sussex before joining the Scottish Section of IHR in Glasgow in 2002 as a Programme Leader Track. He became the Section Director in Glasgow in 2008 then overall Director of IHR in 2015 through its closure in 2018. He is presently Academic Head of Hearing Sciences at UoN and Deputy Director of Research for the School of Medicine. His research focuses on topics of auditory impairment and disability, hearing aids, quality of life, spatial hearing, cross-talk cancellation and noise cancellation, psychophysics, speech perception, and fMRI neuroimaging. He was awarded the 2013 Thomas Simm Littler Prize of the British Society of Audiology, is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, and a past President of the International Collegium of Rehabilitative Audiology. In 2021 he was an Output Assessor for Unit-of-Assessment #3 of the UK “REF”.

 

Victoria M Bajo, University of Oxford, UK

Victoria Bajo is Associate Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at University of Oxford and Lecturer in Neuroscience at Balliol College. She was educated at the University of Salamanca in Spain, where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine and Surgery and a doctorate (MD PhD) in Neuroscience. She worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and back at the University of Salamanca with a Spanish Early Career Award and an EU Human Capital and Mobility Grant. After a brief step in a junior position in Spain, she moved to Oxford with the Millennium when she was awarded a Marie Curie fellowship to work in the Department of Physiology. In 2009, the University of Oxford conferred on her the title of University Research Lecturer and in 2014 the title of Associate Professor. She has been approved as Principal Investigator by DPAG Executive Committee in 2015. The main focus of Victoria’s career is auditory plasticity with a robust reputation in the field endorsed by more than 50 papers published and research projects funded, including three times in a row by Deafness Research UK. Her work has been seminal in establishing the role of specific neural circuits, particularly corticofugal connections in sensory perception and learning-induced auditory plasticity. Using a combination of anatomical tracing techniques including gene expression, optogenetics, electrophysiology in vitro and in vivo in awake animal, and operant conditioning behavioural paradigms she has elucidated the essential role of the auditory cortex in perceptual learning. Currently she is investigating the neural circuits responsible for auditory plasticity in the adult brain involved in the generation of tinnitus. One of her interests is to identify and be able to manipulate neural circuits in the adult brain that contribute to tinnitus and to find out how the condition is affected by sleep.

 

Dwight E. Bergles, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA

Dwight Bergles is a Professor and Vice Chair of Research in the Solomon H. Snyder Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. He is also currently the Director of the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute and the Multiphoton Imaging Core facility at Johns Hopkins. Dwight received his bachelor’s degree in Biology from Boston University in 1990 and his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Physiology from Stanford University in 1995, where he trained with Stephen J Smith. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Craig Jahr at the Vollum Institute in Portland, Oregon, where he studied how astrocytes control the clearance of glutamate at excitatory synapses, before joining the Hopkins faculty in 2000 as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Professor with tenure in 2011. The goal of his laboratory is to understand how interactions between glial cells and neurons influence nervous system development, synaptic function and disease. He has analyzed neuron-glial cell interactions in a variety of physiological contexts, defining how glial cells in the cochlea initiate spontaneous activity in the developing auditory system, and how glial progenitors enable the continued production of oligodendrocytes and myelin in the adult CNS.

 

Alan Brichta, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW, Australia

Despite fifty years of ongoing research, the functional purpose of the efferent vestibular system still remains a mystery – most likely due to its inherently complex mechanisms of action. To combat this, Alan has developed a semi-intact model of the vestibular system, which allows for faithful, high-resolution recordings of hair cell function.  This recording technique has provided new information about the efferent vestibular system, with particular regards to the novel alpha-9 nicotinic receptor.

Alan has ongoing collaborations with vestibular experts Dr Americo Migliaccio (Neuroscience Research Australia; NeuRA), Dr Joseph Holt (University of Rochester, USA) and Dr Richard Rabbitt (University of Utah, USA), as well as HMRI neuroscientists Professor Bob Callister and Dr Doug Smith.  He is also closely affiliated with the Garnett Passe and Rodney Williams Memorial Foundation (GPRWMF), and the Neuro-Otology Society of Australia (NOTSA).  Alan is currently the Head of Discipline (Anatomy), supervises multiple PhD students, and teaches into a number of programs including Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Biomedical Science.

 

R. Michael Burger, Lehigh University Bethlehem, PA, USA

R. Michael Burger is a Professor of Biological Sciences and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at Lehigh University. He earned his PhD from the University of Texas at Austin prior to postdoctoral fellowships at the Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center at the University of Washington School of Medicine and the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. He is a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His work has focused on the physiology of spatial hearing, especially the computational roles of inhibition and neuromodulators in the auditory brainstem. Current work investigates developmental determinants of neural specializations in the cochlear nucleus.

 

Catherine Carr, University of Maryland, USA

Catherine Carr earned her B.S. (Hons) Zoology from the University of Cape Town in 1977, and her Ph. D. in Neuroscience from University of California at San Diego in 1984. She received postdoctoral training with Masakazu Konishi at CalTech and is currently Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Dr. Carr is also President of the Grass Foundation. Current research questions address temporal processing in the auditory system and the evolution of sound localization in birds and other reptiles. She is a Fellow of the International Society for Neuroethology and AAAS.

 

Monita Chatterjee, Boys Town National Research Hospital, Omaha, NE, USA

Short bio coming soon

 

Alan Cheng, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

Alan Cheng is the Edward C. and Amy Sewall Professor in Otolaryngology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also the Chief of the division of Pediatric Otolaryngology and Director of the Stanford Clinician Scientist Training Program. He received his bachelor’s degree in Biology and Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, medical degree at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He pursued Otolaryngology residency training at the University of Washington combined with a T32-supported postdoctoral fellowship training under the tutelage of Edwin Rubel. After a fellowship in Pediatric Otolaryngology at Boston Children’s Hospital, he joined the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Stanford University as a physician-scientist in 2007. At Stanford, he has been studying hair cell development and regeneration, focusing on defining the role of Wnt signaling. In particular, his work has led to the discovery of Wnt-responsive hair cell progenitors in the neonatal mouse cochlea and utricle and defined the features of regenerating mammalian hair cells.

 

Benjamin T Crane, University of Rochester, USA

Benjamin Crane is a clinician-scientist with an MD and PhD in neuroscience from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) awarded in 2000. His doctoral research in Joseph Demer’s laboratory focused on the vestibular control of human eye movements. He also did his residency in otolaryngology at UCLA and a clinical fellowship in otology and neurotology at Johns Hopkins. He has been on faculty at the University of Rochester since 2009 where he is currently a full professor of otolaryngology with tenure. He has joint appointments in the departments of neuroscience and biomedical engineering. He splits his time between clinical otology, teaching, and research. His laboratory studies human vestibular with the goal of developing better methods of vestibular rehabilitation. He is involved teaching undergraduates, graduate students, medical students, and residents. His clinical interest involves the full range of clinical otology and skull base disorders including vertigo, hearing loss, cochlear implants.

 

Gary Curhan, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Dr. Gary Curhan is a physician-scientist at the Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. He is also the Chief Medical Officer of OM1, Inc, a healthcare data and technology company. He received his MD from Harvard Medical School and his ScD in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. He has published widely on many medical conditions including hearing loss, tinnitus, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, kidney stones, gout, and others using data from several large ongoing cohort studies involving over 250,000 participants, the Nurses’ Health Studies and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS). Along with his wife, Dr. Sharon Curhan, he initiated the Conservation of Hearing Study (CHEARS) to examine ear and hearing disorders in these cohorts. Currently, he is involved in several NIH/NIDCD and foundation funded projects underway, including multi-omics investigations of hearing loss and tinnitus. He was the Editor-in-Chief of the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, a leading nephrology journal. Prior to joining OM1, he was Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health.

 

Sharon Curhan, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

Dr. Sharon Curhan is a physician and clinical researcher in chronic disease epidemiology and prevention at the Channing Division of Network Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. She received her medical degree (MD) from Harvard Medical School, ScM in Epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health, and ScB in Neuroscience from Brown University. Her research focuses on the identification of risk factors for acquired hearing loss and tinnitus in several large ongoing cohort studies involving over 250,000 participants, the Nurses’ Health Studies (I, II and III), the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS), and the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS), with an emphasis on potentially modifiable risk factors that may aid in efforts towards prevention. Along with her husband, Dr. Gary Curhan, she initiated the Conservation of Hearing Study (CHEARS) to examine ear and hearing disorders in these cohorts. Currently, she has several NIH/NIDCD and foundation funded projects underway, including multi-omics investigations of hearing loss and tinnitus. Dr. Curhan has been a leader in efforts to promote hearing health at the national and global levels.

 

Alain Dabdoub, University of Toronto, Canada

Professor Alain Dabdoub is Vice Chair of Research in the Department of Otolaryngology, University of Toronto and a senior scientist at Sunnybrook Research Institute. He received his PhD at the University of Maryland in electrophysiology and biophysics and his postdoctoral training at the Deafness Institute at the National Institutes of Health and his first faculty position was at the University of California San Diego. His research program centers on discovering the molecular signaling pathways responsible for the neurodevelopment and regeneration of inner ear sensory epithelia. His goal is to connect the developmental biology of the inner ear to diseases and ultimately to regenerative medicine for the amelioration of hearing loss and balance disorders.

 

Paul Delano, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile

Paul Delano is an Otolaryngology and Neuroscience Professor in both Departments at the Universidad de Chile. He received his MD (2000) and PhD training (2006) in Neuroscience at the University of Chile. He pursued training as an Otolaryngologist in the residency program of the Clinical Hospital of the University of Chile (2010). In 2010, he joined the Neuroscience and Otolaryngology Departments as scientist and otolaryngologist, leading the Laboratory of Neurobiology of Audition from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Chile. At the University of Chile, he has been studying the physiological mechanisms of corticofugal projections from the brain to the inner ear, focusing on the cognitive role of the auditory efferent system, using animal models, but also performing experiments in humans. He has also studied clinical otolaryngology, especially the relation between hearing loss, tinnitus and cognition. He was the Director of the Otolaryngology Department in the University of Chile (2019-2022). Nowadays, he is the Academic Director of the Clinical Hospital of the University of Chile in Santiago.

 

Mark Eckert, Medical University of South Carolina, USA

Mark Eckert is a Professor of Otolaryngology - Head and Neck Surgery at the Medical University of South Carolina. He received a PhD in Psychology from the University of Florida in 1998 and post-doctoral training in human behavioral neurogenetics at the University of Florida and Stanford University. His laboratory uses neuroimaging methods to study the neurobiology of developmental reading disability and age-related changes in hearing and speech communication.

 

Andreas H. Eckhard, Harvard Medical School, USA.

Andreas Eckhard obtained his medical degree from the University of Tuebingen Medical School and the Hearing Research Center, Tuebingen in Germany in 2012, studying molecular water channels (aquaporins) in cochlear non-sensory cells and their role in inner ear fluid homeostasis. He trained as a research fellow in the Otopathology Laboratory at Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Boston, uncovering non-sensory cell pathologies in Meniere’s disease and in other hydrops-related inner ear disorders. He completed his clinical training in otolaryngology at the University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland. His research group in Zurich used a translational imaging-based approach to delineate different non-sensory cell pathologies among clinical Meniere’s patients, developing a framework of disease ”endotypes”, and enabling clinically meaningful predictions about the future disease course. Currently, he is an investigator in the Otopathology laboratory at Massachusetts Eye and Ear and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. His research interests continue to be the cellular and molecular pathomechanisms of inner-ear diseases, foremost Meniere’s disease, with special interest in the pathogenic roles of non-sensory supporting cells. His group seeks to develop and implement new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for vestibular disorders, utilizing methods ranging from basic animal models to translational patient-based approaches, with a dedicated focus on integrating human otopathology research.

 

Ana Belén Elgoyhen, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET ), Argentina

Obtained her Ph.D. in Pharmacology from the University of Buenos Aires and performed her postdoctoral training in Molecular Neurobiology at the Salk Institute, California, under the supervision of Steve Heinemann. Head of the Laboratory of Genetics and Physiology of Hearing, INGEBI-CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina since 1997. Best known for elucidating the molecular entity of the receptors that mediate synaptic transmission between efferent olivocochlear fibers and cochlear hair cells. Her interests include the physiology of olivocochlear efferents at the systems and synaptic level, the mechanisms underlying noise-induced hearing loss and the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms leading to tinnitus. Recipient of several awards including: John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow (2003, USA), TWAS prize in Biology (2011), Howard Hughes Medical Institute International Scholar (1997-2011), Latin American Laureate of the L’Oréal-UNESCO Awards for Women in Science (2008), Scientist of the Argentine Nation nominated by the President (2012), Fondation Pour L´Audition Grand Prix (2018). She is a member of the World Academy of Science, the Latin American Academy of Science and the Argentine Academy of Science.

 

Jutta Engel, School of Medicine at Saarland University, Germany

Jutta Engel graduated with a PhD from Humboldt University Berlin in 1990. After she did postdoctoral projects on Ca2+ signaling in cardiomyocytes and on the neurophysiology of olfactory bulb neurons in Göttingen, Germany, she switched to hearing research in 1998. She started her own group at the Hearing Research Centre at the University of Tübingen in 1999 where she identified the Ca2+ channel of mouse hair cells. She did her habilitation in Physiology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Tübingen in 2008. In 2009 she was appointed Professor for Biophysics at the School of Medicine at Saarland University, Homburg, Germany. Her research focuses on Ca2+ an K+ channels in inner and outer hair cells and the afferent auditory pathway, on the postnatal development of the organ of Corti including Ca2+ waves and transients, and on cochlear synapses and synaptopathy.

 

Douglas Fitzpatrick, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

Douglas Fitzpatrick obtained his PhD in 1988 from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill in 1988 under Dr. O’Dell Henson, and did postdoctoral studies with Drs. Nobuo Suga at Washington University in St. Louis and Dr. Shigeyuki Kuwada at the University of Connecticut Health Center. Dr. Fitzpatrick has contributed to studies on the anatomy and physiology of the auditory cortex in bats and neuronal bases of sound localization, particularly the processing of interaural time differences. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and Head and Neck Surgery at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Current work in his lab focuses mainly on electrocochleography in gerbils and in human cochlear implant subjects.

 

W. Robert J. Funnell, McGill University, Canada

Robert Funnell obtained his Ph.D. in 1975 from the Department of Electrical Engineering and the BioMedical Engineering Unit of McGill University, Montréal, under Charles Laszlo. He did a post-doc at l’Université de Montréal in the Department of Physiology, under Fernand Roberge. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Departments of BioMedical Engineering and Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery at McGill, and an Associate Member in Electrical & Computer Engineering and in Pediatric Surgery. His main research area is linear and nonlinear middle-ear mechanics, including both experimental measurements and computational modelling, especially using the finite-element method, and with a particular focus on newborn hearing screening.

 

Silvano Gallus, Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS, Italy.

Silvano Gallus (ScD in Computer Sciences, PhD in Public Health) leads the Laboratory of Lifestyle Epidemiology of Mario Negri Institute, Milan, Italy. In 2017-2021 he has been Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham, UK. During his 25-year career, Dr Gallus gained extensive experience in conducting independent research and collaborative work in the fields of epidemiology and public health. His main fields of interest include the epidemiology of tobacco use in Italy and Europe; the design, data managing and statistical analyses of case-control studies on the association between several risk factors (including in particular tobacco use, alcohol drinking, diet and obesity) and the risk of cancer, coronary heart disease and other chronic conditions, including tinnitus; the conduction and analysis of systematic reviews, meta-analyses and observational clinical studies. He is now focusing his research on the impact of the use of electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products on tobacco control and on the epidemiology of tinnitus. Dr Gallus is author/co-author of more than 430 papers, including more than 370 articles in peer-reviewed journals (h-index: 66 according to Scopus). For scientific merits, Dr. Gallus has received several awards, including the Ig-Nobel prize for medicine in 2019.

 

Jaime Garcia-Anoveros, Northwestern University, IL, USA

Short bio coming soon

 

Anne-Lise Giraud, University of Geneva, Switzerland

Professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine at the University of Geneva, Anne-Lise Giraud obtained a doctorate in neurosciences from the University of Lyon in 1997. She completed her first post-doctorate in London, then a second in Frankfurt. Thanks to subsidies from the German Ministry of Research, in 2001 she founded her own research group at the Brain Imaging Center in Frankfurt. In 2004, she obtained a research position at the CNRS (France). She then founded in Paris with two colleagues the INSERM Laboratory of Cognitive Neurosciences. Anne-Lise Giraud contributes to the creation of the Master of Cognitive Sciences at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and participates in training in neuropsychology at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris. She became a research director in 2007 and, in 2010, received a CNRS award and a grant from the European Research Council (ERC). She joined the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva in 2012 where she continued her research on the neurocomputational principles involved in the perception and production of speech. She was appointed Full Professor in the Department of Basic Neurosciences in October 2013. Since 2020, she has been co-director of the National Research Center on the Evolution of Language (NCCR-Evolving Language).

 

Nace Golding, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

Nace Golding is a Professor in the Department of Neuroscience and the Institute for Neuroscience, at UT Austin. He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the guidance of Dr. Donata Oertel. His postdoctoral work was in the Department of Neurobiology and Physiology at Northwestern University with Nelson Spruston (now at Janelia Farms HHMI).  Nace Golding is a member of the Center for Learning and Memory and Center for Perceptual Systems. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

 

Michael Heinz, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, USA

Michael G. Heinz is a Professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences and of Biomedical Engineering. Mike is a native of Baltimore, MD and grew up sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. He received an Sc.B. degree in Electrical Engineering from Brown University in 1992. He then completed a Masters in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Johns Hopkins University in 1994, where he performed psychoacoustical experiments measuring the ability of human listeners to detect signals in noise (with Craig Formby and Moise Goldstein). In 2000, he received a Ph.D. from the MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology in the area of Speech and Hearing Sciences (mentor: Laurel Carney). His dissertation involved computational and theoretical modeling to quantify the amount of information in auditory-nerve responses for psychoacoustical tasks. His post-doctoral work was in Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (mentor: Eric Young), where his work evaluated possible neural correlates of loudness recruitment by comparing neurophysiological responses from single auditory-nerve fibers in animals with normal hearing and noise-induced hearing loss.

In 2005, he joined the faculty at Purdue as an Assistant Professor, where he and his lab members have been investigating the relation between neurophysiological and perceptual responses to sound with normal and impaired hearing through the coordinated use of neurophysiology, computational modeling, and psychoacoustics. He teaches courses in both SLHS and BME. In 2010, he was elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), and served as Chair of the ASA Technical Committee on Psychological and Physiological Acoustics from 2011-2014. In 2016, he was chosen as a University Faculty Scholar, and in 2021 he received the Career Research Award from the College of Health and Human Sciences at Purdue. He currently serves as the Co-Director of an NIH-funded (T32) Interdisciplinary Training Program in Auditory Neuroscience (TPAN), and serves as the Director of Graduate Programs in BME.

 

Stefan Heller, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

Stefan Heller is the Edward C. and Amy H Sewall Professor in the School of Medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is a member of the Stanford Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine. Stefan is researching the molecular basis of hearing and balance and developing therapies to reverse sensory hair cell loss in the cochlea. He has ties to the biotech industry in the form of advisory roles as well as serving as director. Before joining Stanford University, Stefan conducted research at the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary and was a faculty member of Harvard Medical School. His postdoctoral work from 1995 to 2000 was with Jim Hudspeth at The Rockefeller University. He obtained his Ph.D. in Genetics from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz in 1994.

 

Ronna Hertzano, University of Maryland, USA

Dr. Hertzano is an otolaryngologist surgeon-scientist. Her clinical practice focuses on the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of the ear, with an emphasis on hearing restoration. She sees and treats patients of all ages that suffer from hereditary and non-hereditary auditory and vestibular dysfunction. Translationally, her goal is to make significant contributions towards the treatment of congenital and acquired auditory and vestibular dysfunction (hertzanolab.org). Towards hearing restoration, she works to unravel the regulatory signaling cascades that lead to the proper development of the ear and specifically the hair cells. She leads a collaborative team that develops and applies a variety of approaches for cell type-specific multi-omic analyses of the ear followed by state-of-the art informatic analysis to identify key regulators of gene expression in hair cell development, and cell type-specific signaling cascades in acquired hearing loss (e.g., noise induced hearing loss). These are then validated by physiological and biological assay. To facilitate dissemination, sharing and analysis of multi-omic data Dr. Hertzano is the founder of the gEAR portal –gene Expression Analysis Resource (UMgEAR.org). The gEAR became the primary warehouse and omics analysis environment for the hearing and balance research communities. It significantly increased data sharing in the ear field and serves to catalyze discovery. Finally, Dr. Hertzano has a strong interest in mentorship and training of the next generation of clinicians, scientists and clinician-scientists.

Her laboratory consists of students at all levels – from high school students to senior researchers, and functions as a ‘home’ for those with a shared interest in advancing hearing health. Dr. Hertzano was born in Israel and received her medical degree and PhD in human molecular genetics and biochemistry from Sackler School of Medicine at Tel Aviv University. She completed her residency in otorhinolaryngology-head and neck surgery at UMSOM before joining the school as an instructor in 2011. She was promoted to assistant professor in 2012, associate professor in 2016, and professor in 2021. Dr. Hertzano’s research is funded by the NIH, Department of Defense Foundation Grants. She serves as the Chair of the American Neurotology Society Research Committee, an Associate Editor of Otology & Neurotology, and is a Commissioner on the Lancet’s 35th Commission to Reduce the Burden of Hearing Loss. Dr. Hertzano is a recipient of numerous awards including the Association for Research in Otolaryngology Burt Evans Young Researcher Award (2014), Brian E. Emery, M.D., Outstanding Teaching Award, UMSOM, department of Otorhinolaryngology (2016), Distinction Award in Alternative/Basic Science for the Triological Society Thesis (2020), the University of Maryland Baltimore, Researcher of the Year Award (2021) and a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

 

Hiroshi Hibino, Osaka University, Japan

Short bio coming soon

 

Keiko Hirose, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA

Keiko Hirose is Professor at Washington University School of Medicine. She is a pediatric otolaryngologist and basic research scientist who studies innate immunity in the inner ear. Her research program focuses on the contributions of inflammation and immunity in inner ear diseases and interventions including congenital CMV infection, bacterial meningitis and cochlear implantation. Her clinical focus is on pediatric hearing loss, cochlear implantation, and chronic ear disease. She obtained her MD at Harvard Medical School, completed internship and residency at the University of Washington in Seattle. Her fellowship in pediatric otolaryngology was performed at Boston Children’s Hospital. She completed two postdoctoral fellowships in the laboratories of Ed Rubel in Seattle during residency, with Charlie Liberman at the Eaton Peabody Labs at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary after fellowship. She has been at Washington University in St. Louis since 2008.

 

Fatima Husain, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, USA

Dr. Fatima Husain is a Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Science, the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and the Neuroscience Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has a PhD in Cognitive and Neural Systems from Boston University. Before joining the University of Illinois, Dr. Husain was a postdoctoral fellow and a research fellow with the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institutes of Health. Her research on hearing and cognition and associated disorders such as hearing loss, tinnitus, hyperacusis and misophonia uses a combination of computational modelling, brain imaging experiments, and behavioral studies. Presently, she is Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the American Tinnitus Association, standing member of the Sensory Systems & Communication Disorders review committee of the US Department of Veteran Affairs.

 

Sung Huhn Kim, Yonsei University College of Medicine, South Korea

Sung Huhn Kim graduated with an M.D. from Yonsei University College of Medicine in 1998 and obtained a PhD degree from the Graduate School of Yonsei University in 2011. He completed postdoctoral training in the Cellular Biophysics Laboratory, Department of Anatomy and Physiology, Kansas State University from 2007 to 2009 and worked as a visiting scientist at the Cell Physiology Laboratory, Department of Anatomy and Physiology, Kansas State University from 2016 to 2017. He is a professor of the Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Yonsei University College of Medicine. His main research interest is ion transport, homeostasis of the inner ear and related disorders, such as Meniere’s disease and genetic hearing loss/vestibular disorders. Recently, he is investigating the pathological mechanism of Meniere’s disease and genetic peripheral vestibular disorders.

 

Conny Kopp-Scheinpflug, Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany

PD Dr. Conny Kopp-Scheinpflug is a neuroscientist who earned her PhD from the University of Leipzig, Germany. She received postdoctoral fellowships to work with Bruce Tempel at the Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center at the University of Washington School of Medicine and later with Ian Forsythe at the Medical Research Council, UK before starting her independent research lab at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich. Her research focuses on how the brain processes temporal properties of sound rhythms, with a specific interest in adaptations of hearing to changing levels of activity, noise pollution, fear and stress. Her main expertise is in in vivo and in in vitro electrophysiology, ion channels and synaptic circuits.

 

Francois Lallemend, Karolinska Institute, Sweden

Francois Lallemend received his PhD at the GIGA Neuroscience, in Liege (Belgium) in 2005, followed by postdoctoral research at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, at Karolinska Institute (KI, Sweden) from 2006 to 2010 working on neural crest cell lineage. Francois received an Assistant Professor position in 2011 and was recruited to the Department of Neuroscience, KI, in 2013, where he is an Associate Professor of neurobiology of sensory systems and a Wallenberg Academy Fellow. Work in his lab is focusing on characterizing the development and functional organization of sensory systems, and how particular breakdowns in their individual functional parts can lead to sensory disorders.

 

Berthold Langguth, Medical University of Regensburg, Germany

Berthold Langguth is Head Physician at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Regensburg at the Bezirksklinikum Regensburg and also Head of the multidisciplinary Tinnitus Clinic of the University of Regensburg. In 2006 he co-founded the Tinnitus Research Initiative and still acts as the chair of the executive committee. He has been trained in neurology, psychiatry, psychotherapy and pain medicine. Research interests include brain imaging and stimulation for assessing and inducing neuroplastic changes in the human brain as well as clinical trial methodology, clinical data management / analysis and E-Health. He has (co)authored over 200 papers on topics of brain stimulation and clinical neuroscience.

 

Amanda Lauer, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Amanda Lauer, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in Otolaryngology-HNS at Johns Hopkins University. Research in the Lauer Lab focuses on understanding how abnormal auditory input from the ear affects the brain, how the brain, in turn, affects activity in the ear through top-down feedback loops, and comparative models of hearing. Dr. Lauer is also active in mentoring programs aimed at increasing diversity and inclusion in science and supporting early-career scientists. Areas of expertise: auditory phenotyping, comparative animal models of hearing loss, olivocochlear system, cochlear nucleus, noise exposure, age-related hearing loss, otopathology.

 

Jose A. Lopez-Escamez, Centre for Genomics and Oncological Research (GENYO), Pfizer-University of Granada-Junta de Andalucía, PTS, Granada, Spain.

Clinical neurotologist and PhD in Neurosciences by training with >25 years of translational research in vestibular disorders, including Meniere disease. ARO membership since 1993, he served in the Program Committee during 2016-20. His PhD, awarded in 1998 at the University of Granada, aimed at the ototoxic effect of gentamicin in the otolithic membrane in mice. He is associate Professor of Otorhinolaryngology at the Universidad de Granada and Principal Investigator at the Centre for Genomics and Oncology Research (GENyO). He has gained international experience at the University of London (Prof. Warley), University of Michigan (Prof. Schacht) and University of Luxembourg (Prof. Balling). He also has been serving as Scientific Director of the Instituto de Investigación Biosanitaria de Granada (ibs.Granada) during 2018-20. His research activity focuses on genomics of vestibular disorders, aiming the identification of genes and alterations of the immune system in patients with Meniere disease, as well as on the genetic basis of tinnitus. His research group has identified OTOG, MYO7A and TECTA genes in familial Meniere disease and ANK2 and TSC2 in patients with severe tinnitus. His awards include Bronze Medal of Spanish Society of Otorhinolaryngology (2009), the Vestibular Research Prize at the Politzer Society (2018) and Frontiers Spotlight Award for the Research Topic on Vestibular contribution to health and Disease (2018). He was ranked in the Stanford World Top 2% Scientists in 2021.

 

Enrique A. Lopez-Poveda, University of Salamanca, Spain.

Graduated in 1993 from the University of Salamanca with a degree in Physics and received a PhD in Hearing Sciences from Loughborough University in 1996. He is now a chair professor of Audiological Sciences and director of the Audiology Diploma at the University of Salamanca, director of the Auditory Computation and Psychoacoustics Laboratory at the Neuroscience Institute of Castile and León, and director of the Audiology Group at the Biomedical Research Institute of Salamanca. He has been associate professor at the University of Castilla-La Mancha, ‘Ramón y Cajal’ research fellow, and invited research scientist at the Universities of Minnesota and Duke. His research interests include understanding and modeling nonlinear cochlear signal processing, elucidating hearing-in-noise deficits, and improving hearing aids and cochlear implants. He also serves as Associate Editor for Trends in Hearing. He is a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America, of the International Collegium of Rehabilitative Audiology, and of Loughborough University Institute of Advanced Studies.

 

Brigitte Malgrange, University of Liege, Liege, Belgium

Short bio coming soon

 

Colette McKay, The Bionics Institute of Australia, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

Professor McKay is an international leader in hearing research and is currently the Principal Scientist at the Bionics Institute in Melbourne. Her multidisciplinary research aims to improve the lives of people with hearing impairment. She has contributed significantly to the design and signal processing strategies used in the family of cochlear implants manufactured by Cochlear Ltd. She graduated and received her PhD from the University of Melbourne in the fields of mathematics and physics. From 1991-2004, she was Research Fellow, Senior Research Fellow, and then Principal Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne Department of Otolaryngology, and currently holds an honorary professorial fellow position in the Department of Medical Bionics. From 2005 to 2013 she held chair and research group leadership positions at Aston University, Birmingham, and Manchester University in the UK. Since 2013 she has led the Translational Hearing Research group at the Bionics Institute, and has established Australia’s first brain imaging laboratory for hearing research using functional near-infrared spectroscopy.

 

Martin Meyer, University of Zürich, Switzerland

Short bio coming soon

 

John C. Middlebrooks, University of California at Irvine, USA

John Middlebrooks did his undergrad work at Caltech, his Ph.D. work at UC San Francisco with Michael Merzenich (1982), and his post-doc work at Stanford with Eric Knudsen (1985). He has served previously on the faculties of the University of Florida and the Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan. He presently is a Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery and a member of the Center for Hearing Research at the University of California at Irvine. He has a longstanding interest in spatial hearing, employing human and animal psychophysics and animal cortical physiology. He also studies brain responses to cochlear electrical stimulation in animal models. He presently is involved in translation studies of a novel penetrating auditory nerve electrode that is intended to improve transmission of temporal fine structure. He is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and a former President of the ARO.

 

Arturo Moleti, University of Roma Tor Vergata, Italy

Arturo Moleti got his degree in Physics (Far Infrared Astronomy and Cosmology) from Roma La Sapienza University in 1985 and his PhD in Physics (Thermonuclear magnetically confined plasmas) from Roma La Sapienza University in 1991. His research activity (1994-) at the University of Roma Tor Vergata was initially dedicated to Gravitational Wave experiments and, more recently (1999-), to the Physics of Hearing, with a particular interest in cochlear mechanics and otoacoustic emissions. His current research covers theoretical cochlear modeling, related numerical simulations, the development of advanced data aquisition and analysis techniques for otoacoustic emissions, and their application to neurodegenerative pathologies, occupational health, and to the study of the astronauts’ physiology in the ISS microgravity environment.

 

Heidi Nakajima, Harvard Medical School, MA, USA

Short bio coming soon

 

Patrick K.A. Neff, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland

Patrick Neff has a background in psychology, neuroscience, hearing sciences, linguistics and neuroinformatics. He received his PhD from the University in Zurich in 2017. Since then, he has worked extensively on tinnitus in Regensburg (Prof. Langguth) and Salzburg (Prof. Weisz). In 2022 he completed his habilitation at the University of Regensburg, Faculty of Medicine and is currently residing at the EPFL in Geneva as a senior research scientist. Current research questions address cortical processing of auditory illusions and neuromodulation of tinnitus.

 

Fumiaki Nin, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Japan

Fumiaki Ning graduated from Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine as an MD in 2000. He received his medical training in Otorhinolaryngology and Head-and-Neck Surgery in Japan from 2000 to 2005. He also received his initial training in electrophysiology at the Department of Pharmacology II, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University. He then received his MD, PhD degree from Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Graduate School of Medicine in 2009. He undertook an overseas research fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and performed postdoctoral research experience at the Department of Sensory Neuroscience, Rockefeller University, New York. After scientific activities at Niigata University School of Medicine, he is currently a professor at the Department of Physiology, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine. He is a member of councilors in the Physiological Society of Japan, a laureate of Inoue Science Research Award from Inoue Foundation for Science in 2014 and Hiroshi and Aya Irisawa Memorial Promotion Award for Young Physiologists from the Physiological Society of Japan in 2017. His research focuses on physiology and biophysics, in particular, the electrophysiology and mechanics of the cochlea in the stria vascularis and the organ of Corti.

 

Dáibhid Ó Maoiléidigh, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

Dáibhid Ó Maoiléidigh has a BA in Theoretical Physics and an MSc in High-Performance Computing from Trinity College Dublin. He completed his PhD in Physics at Rutgers University in 2006 on the kinetics of transcription elongation. During his postdoctoral training in the Division of Biological Physics at the Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems and the Laboratory for Sensory Neuroscience at The Rockefeller University, he worked on cochlear mechanics, hair-bundle mechanics, synaptic dynamics, and otoacoustic emissions. Notably, his work explained how active hair bundles can be controlled to better detect the stimuli corresponding to their sensory organ. Since 2019, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Stanford. His lab uses mathematical, physics-based, and computational approaches to study hearing and balance. He works closely with experimental collaborators and his work demonstrates how mathematics, physics, and computation can help explain experimental observations and motivate new experiments.

Adrian Rees, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Adrian Rees is Professor of Auditory Neuroscience and Director of the Centre for Transformative Neuroscience at Newcastle University. He graduated from Oxford University (Keble College) in Physiological Sciences and continued there to gain his doctorate under Roy Kay, and later as Staines Medical Research Fellow at Exeter College. He left to spend two years as a Harkness Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh where he worked with Aage Møller. On returning to the UK, he completed a post doc with Alan Palmer at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research, Nottingham before being appointed to a lectureship in Physiological Sciences at Newcastle. His research interests focus on the structure and function of the auditory pathway (particularly the midbrain), the mechanisms of tinnitus, and interactions between vision and hearing. Current projects include studies of the descending projections to the midbrain, and the role of nitric oxide in neuronal signalling and tinnitus. His lab employs a diverse range of techniques from recording and labelling single neurons to functional imaging and psychophysics in humans. He is a fellow of the Physiological Society

 

Lina A.J. Reiss, Oregon Hearing Research Center, USA

Lina Reiss graduated with a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2005, investigating neural circuitry of the cochlear nucleus using single neuron recording, systems analysis methods, and computational modeling. She then did a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Iowa where she conducted research in the Hybrid cochlear implant clinical trials, and during this time discovered pitch plasticity with cochlear implants. Dr. Reiss is currently an Associate Professor at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), where she leads a group conducting research on auditory perception and this differs with hearing loss, with a focus on binaural fusion and spectral integration. She also conducts research on mechanisms of hearing loss and neural health loss after cochlear implantation, and recently got a cochlear implant herself. Dr. Reiss is currently vice-president of the AIR board for the Conference for Implantable Auditory Prostheses, serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Acoustical Society of America and on the Research Advisory Board for the American Otological Society, and was recently named a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America for contributions to understanding of Acoustic and Electric hearing.

 

Marta Roccio, University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland

Dr Roccio studied Biology at the University of Milano (IT). She obtained her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Biology from the University of Utrecht (NL) in 2007. After a first postdoc at the University of Utrecht working on stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, she moved as postdoctoral fellow to the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne -EPFL- (CH), where she continued her research on stem cell biology and bioengineering. Her work focused on live imaging and clonal analysis of neural stem cell in bioengineered niches. In 2013 she moved to the Department of Biomedical Research at the University of Bern (CH), first as co-PI and later as head of the Inner Ear Biology Lab. The group developed different approaches to study inner ear development, degeneration and regeneration. Since early 2020 she works at the University of Zurich, at the Clinic of Otorhinolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, as Principal Investigator of the Inner Ear Stem Cell Lab. The current focus of the lab is the establishment of human iPSC-derived models of the inner ear sensory epithelia and otic neurons, to study development & disease and probe novel hearing restoration strategies.

 

Mark A. Rutherford, Washington University in St. Louis, USA.

Neuroscientist by training with 20 years of experience at the sensory hair cell ribbon synapse. His PhD, awarded in 2005 at the University of Oregon (Eugene), aimed at understanding synaptic vesicle exocytosis from hair cells in the sacculus of the frog. As a postdoc, he studied the relationship between exocytosis of glutamate from hair cells and action potential generation in the 8th nerve, first in the frog sacculus (with Bill Roberts) and then in the cochlea of the rat (with Tobias Moser). In the Inner Ear Lab at the University of Goettingen (Germany) he made the first intracellular recordings of action potential generation in the excised organ of Corti. Dr. Rutherford joined the faculty in the Dept. of Otolaryngology of the School of Medicine at Washington University (St. Louis) in 2013, where he focuses on the molecular anatomy and physiology of glutamate receptors and ion channels with a goal to develop therapies for prevention and treatment of noise-induced hearing loss.

 

William Sedley, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

I am a medical graduate, combining clinical practice in neurology with research in clinical and basic neuroscience. My research focuses on high-level perceptual processing mechanisms in the brain, with a particular focus on hearing, and related disorders such as tinnitus. I am interested in how our brains make predictions based on past and recent experience, and reconcile these with incoming input from our sensory organs to deterime what we actually infer and perceive about the environment. My current core research programme is funded by the Wellcome Trust, focusing on the intensity of sensory stimuli and its perceptual correlate (e.g. the loudness of sound). I am particularly interested in whether, and how, the processing of intensity is governed by the same type of predictive processing as other sensory attributes (such as pitch, colour and duration), or whether there are fundamental differences. These questions are highly pertinent to common and unsolved clinical conditions including tinnitus, hyperacusis and chronic pain. My research is conducted on human volunteers, with and without clinical conditions, and uses a range of neuromaging measures including EEG, MEG, fMRI and direct electrode recordings.

 

Su-Hua Sha, Medical University of South Carolina, USA

Su-Hua Sha had her medical training at Tongji Medical College in Wuhan China, received her M.D. from Essen University in Germany (1994), and had her post-doc training and junior faculty experience at the Kresge Hearing Research Institute at the University of Michigan. She presently is a Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and a mentor for Graduate Studies at the Medical University of South Carolina. Drawing from her background, she has been fascinated by study of the mechanisms underlying cochlear pathologies and in translating research findings into clinical therapies to prevent or ameliorate acquired hearing loss. She has identified and characterized molecular pathways involved in acquired hearing loss due to ototoxicity, noise trauma, and aging.

 

Joseph Sollini, University of Nottingham, UK

Joseph Sollini received his doctoral training in Biomedical Science at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research (University of Nottingham). In 2012 he moved to Imperial College London to work with Paul Chadderton applying opto and chemogenetics to demonstrate the role of auditory cortical circuits in enhancing hearing in complex backgrounds (e.g. AM and FM sounds). In 2016 he joined the lab of Jennifer Bizley at the UCL Ear Institute to study the role of auditory cortical circuits in hearing-in-noise, developing an animal behavioural model (ferret) of speech-in-speech listening. In 2020 he was awarded a Nottingham Research Fellowship to start his laboratory in the Hearing Sciences group at the University of Nottingham. His lab uses opto and chemogenetics to functionally dissect auditory circuits to elucidate the role of auditory cortex (and its projections) in hearing-in-noise behaviour.

 

George Spirou, University of South Florida, USA

George Spirou completed his undergraduate degree at Denison University, studying physics and philosophy, his masters degree in physiology at Indiana University Medical Center, his doctoral degree in neuroscience at the University of Florida studying with William Brownell, and fellowship in biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University studying with Eric Young. He advanced through the academic ranks at West Virginia University, where he was Director of Research for the Department of Otolaryngology, and Director of the university-wide Center for Neuroscience. Currently he is Professor of Medical Engineering at the University of South Florida. He is interested in structure/function relationships in the lower auditory system as they pertain to the neural encoding of sound, and more recently in the context of connectomics, via the mapping of neural connections at subcellular resolution using volume electron microscopy techniques, and development of synaptic connections, using animal models. He also has entrepreneurial interests as co-founder of syGlass, which is virtual reality software for visualization, analysis and communication of 3D and 4D image volumes.

 

Karen P Steel, King’s College London, UK.

Karen obtained her PhD from University College London followed by research posts at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham, at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Hinxton, and currently is Professor of Sensory Function at King’s College London. Trained as a mouse geneticist, her main goal is to understand deafness. She uses genetics as a tool to understand the underlying molecular pathways, and her current focus is on progressive (age-related) hearing loss. Her group works with both mouse and human data, using the mouse for understanding the different pathophysiological mechanisms involved in hearing loss and human genomic data to establish the most common types of deafness in the population. Several of the pathways she has identified in the mouse are good targets for drug development. She was awarded the Brain Prize for her research in 2012 and has served the research community as an elected member of Council of the Royal Society, elected President of the International Mammalian Genetics Society, and elected President of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology among many other roles.

 

Christoff Stieger, University of Basel, Switzerland.

Christof Stieger studied electrical engineering and medical physics at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology-Zürich (ETH), Lausanne (EPFL) and at the Université catholique de Louvain la Neuve (UCL) Belgium. In 1999, he started research in Hearing Implants at the Department of ENT, Inselspital, Bern and got the Ph.D. from University of Neuchâtel. He became Assistant Professor 2009 at the University Bern. In 2011, he joint the Middle Ear Research group at MEEI, Harvard, Boston. Since 2013, he is the Head of Audiology, Neurootology and Cochlear Implant Center at the University Hospital Basel where he also got the venia docendi. He is currently the president of the Swiss Cochlear Implant Working Group (CICH).

 

Nicola Strenzke, University Medical Center, Göttingen, Germany

Nicola Strenzke received her training as a clinical otolaryngologist in Göttingen. In parallel, she engaged in auditory systems electrophysiology recordings in mice in the group of Tobias Moser (Göttingen). After a postdoc with M. Charles Liberman (Harvard University) she started her own research group in Göttingen, where she characterizes auditory nerve responses in mouse models for human hearing loss, with a focus on auditory synaptopathy/neuropathy. Since 2020, she holds a Heisenberg-Professorship for Clinical and Experimental Audiology and leads the clinical department of Audiology in Göttingen. In her research, she links clinical characteristics of hearing loss in humans with detailed phenotyping of appropriate animal models.

 

Marcel van der Heijden, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Short bio coming soon

 

Barbara Vona, University Medical Center Göttingen, Germany

A human geneticist by training, Barbara Vona received initial training in the United States before completing her PhD in Human Genetics in Germany in 2014. She then completed a post doc at the University of Würzburg exploring the genetics of hearing impairment in patients from diverse population backgrounds and focused on novel gene identification in undiagnosed patients. In 2018, she started a Junior Group at the University of Tübingen and learned additional animal- and cell-based models as tools for characterizing variants and gene function. In 2021, she joined the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience and Institute of Human Genetics at the University Medical Center Göttingen as a group leader where she continues to work on gene identification, genotype-phenotype correlations, and unravelling the mechanisms of hereditary hearing loss through the lens of human genetics. She is a member of the ClinGen Gene and Variant Expert Curation Panels for hearing loss, as well as a gene reviewer for the Genomics England PanelApp for auditory neuropathy and hearing loss.

 

Joseph Walton, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

Dr. Walton currently holds the title of Professor in the departments of Communication Sciences & Disorders and Aging Studies, and also holds a joint appointment in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering. He is an Associate Director at the Global Center of Speech and Hearing Research a joint program of the Colleges of Behavioral & Community Sciences and Engineering. He obtained his PhD in Auditory Neuroscience, his MA in Hearing Science/Audiology and BA in Communication Sciences from the University of Florida. He was awarded a VA fellowship in Audiology which was completed at the Gainesville VA Hospital. Up until last year, Dr. Walton had been a faculty member for 25 years in the Otolaryngology & Audiology, and Neurobiology & Anatomy Departments at the University of Rochester Medical School, Rochester, New York. His research has been funded over 15 years by a National Institutes of Health Program Project Grant which studies the neural bases of age-related hearing loss. His laboratory is currently involved in three areas of study, i) identification of neurons within the auditory pathway specialized for extracting rapid acoustic events, ii) elucidating age-related changes in neural processing of complex auditory signals presented in degraded acoustic environments, and iii) neural plasticity following exposure to an enriched auditory environment in a mouse model of congenital hearing loss.

 

Nathan Weisz, University of Salzburg, Austria

Short bio coming soon

 

Robert H. Withnell, Indiana University, IN, Bloomington, USA

Robert Withnell completed his Ph.D. in 1999 in the Auditory Physiology Laboratory at The University of Western Australia, focusing on the impact of cochlear nonlinearity on the generation of otoacoustic emmisions. Postdoctoral work at Northwestern University was directed at investigating extracellular voltage sources driving cochlear mechanical amplification. Since 2000, his research has combined experimental and modeling approaches to investigate the mechanics of the mammalian ear, primarily in the areas of mechanisms of generation of otoacoutsic emissions and middle ear mechanics. In 2021, after 22 years in the USA, Robert returned to Australia. He maintains an affiliation with Indiana University as emeritus faculty and currently continues his research collaborations with colleagues in the USA.

 

Christian Lorenzi, École normale supérieure de Paris, France

Christian Lorenzi is a professor of experimental psychology at the École normale supérieure (ENS) in Paris (France). Christian Lorenzi was initially trained as an experimental psychologist and auditory psychophysicist at the University Lyon II in France, and as a postdoctoral auditory scientist at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge and at the Institute of Hearing Research in Glasgow (UK). He was recruited as a Lecturer in Psychology in 1997 at University Paris Descartes, and promoted to a full Professorship position in Psychology at the same university in 2001. He is now full Professor at ENS and Université Paris Sciences & Lettres since 2011. He was nominated at the Institut Universitaire de France as a junior member in 2001, and elected as a fellow of the Acoustical Society of America in 2008. Christian Lorenzi is a funding member and former leader of the Audition lab at ENS in Paris. He has been the head of the department of cognitive studies at ENS and director of scientific studies at ENS.

 

Xiaorui Shi, Oregon Hearing Research Center, USA.

Shi, Xiaorui is currently a Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology, Neck, and Head Surgery, Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Shi received her Ph.D. at Henan Medical University, China, in 1997 in auditory physiology with a focus on cochlear blood flow and noise-induced vascular pathophysiology. She joined the Oregon Hearing Research Center at Oregon Health & Science University in 1999 for postdoctoral training. Then she remains becoming faulty. She received OHSU Technology Transfer & Business Development Awards, USA and OHSU Innovation Award for her research. Dr. Shi’s laboratory has focused on understanding the regulation of cochlear blood flow, the integrity of the blood-labyrinth barrier, and the repair of damaged micro-vessels. Normal blood supply to the cochlea and integrity of the blood-labyrinth-barrier (BLB) in the stria vascularis are critically important for sustaining endocochlear potential, ion transport, endolymphatic fluid balance, and a tight barrier against toxic substances. Dysfunction of cochlear blood flow and disruption of the cochlear BLB is believed to be one of the etiologic factors in noise-induced hearing loss, age-related changes in auditory/vestibular function, sudden hearing loss or vestibular function, and Meniere's disease. A better understanding of the homeostatic mechanisms governing cochlear blood flow would permit more effective management of these hearing disorders. The ultimate goal of research in the Shi lab is to improve the quality of life of people with vascular dysfunction associated with deafness.