2009 BIE Students

Charlie Askew
"I am a 3rd year PhD student in neuroscience at the University of Virginia and my advisor is Jeff Holt. In the Holt/Géléoc lab I study potassium conductances in mammalian cochlear hair cells using electrophysiology, viral mediated gene delivery, and other molecular biology techniques. The BIE course was invaluable for me because it gave me the chance to get hands on experience with multiple different model organisms and techniques, learn a broad background of the field from the experts, form connections with peers in my field, as well as interact with the leaders of the field and have detailed discussions about their research."

Tiffany Baker
I am a graduate student at the Medical Universtiy of South Carolina (MUSC). I am working in Dr. Lisa Cunningham's lab to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying cisplatin-induced hair cell death and the potential for heat shock proteins to protect against hair cell death. Our model system is an in vitro preparation of adult mouse utricle.

BIE 2009 was an excellent experience for me. The coursework was both intense and rewarding. The experience has provided me with more confidence in my knowledge of inner ear research. Additionally, I had the fortune to meet some outstanding individuals with whom I hope to stay in touch.

Keith Bryan
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA.
My interest in the hearing field began during my PhD work in Peter Rubenstein’s laboratory. My project focused on determining the biochemical consequences of deafness-causing mutations in gamma-nonmuscle actin on actin function and regulation. For my postdoctoral training, I joined the laboratory of Amy Lee in the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Iowa. My current project focuses on understanding the role of Ca2+ binding proteins on the regulation of ion channels in cochlear hair cells.

The Biology of the Inner Ear Course at Woods Hole was a blast! I highly recommend this course to anyone interested in learning more about auditory and vestibular research. The contacts I made as well as the technical skills I learned while at this course have been and will be invaluable to my research.

Robstein Chidavaenzi
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), Chicago, IL
I am a graduate student working on the characterization of the striated organelle under Dr Anna Lysakowski. Our lab does mostly morphological experiments, though for my project I am exploring functional aspects of the striated organelle. Attending the MBL’s BIE course for me represented a major milestone in my graduate life and came just when I was making the transition from coursework to laboratory work and ably equipped me to tackle my project using techniques outside the normal comfort zone of the lab. The course thus seemed tailor-made for this transition and helped transform me from one who knew very little on inner ear research coming in, to someone ‘drunk’ with inner ear biology and the different facts of research techniques and models coming out. The different avenues of research, methodologies and animal models were synthesized and presented in such as a manner that I learnt not only the underlying biology but also physiologic and genetic techniques that I am now incorporating into the work I am doing. For anyone who is looking to really grasp inner ear biology like I was, I cannot imagine a better environment or better use of one’s summer than going to the MBL for the BIE course. You’ll never regret it!

Amanda Clause
I am currently finishing up my PhD in the lab of Karl Kandler at the University of Pittsburgh. Our lab studies the development and refinement of an inhibitory circuit in the auditory brainstem, the tonotopic connections from the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body to the lateral superior olive. I am particularly interested in the role activity plays in this process, both the sound-evoked activity found after hearing onset, but also the spontaneous activity generated in the cochlea before the onset of hearing. BIE provided a great opportunity for me to learn more about the periphery of the auditory system so I could better understand its influence on central processing and circuits.

Harold Couchoux

Thomas Effertz
I am a Phd-Student in Martin Göpferts Lab in Göttingen. Unorthodoxly we are working with Drosophila melanogaster to understand the process of sound transduction, hearing. In doing so we try to unravel the inner workings of the mechanosensitive transducing machinery proper, the actual transducer channel, the motors behind amplification and adaptation and the codings stratagies involved in the perception of sound, gravity, and wind and all of that done with a set of only ca. 500 sensory neurons. So far my own work has shown that the TRPN1 (NompC) channel is a very good candidate to be the mechanosensitive transducer channel proper for Drosophila sound-perception. The transducer for gravity/wind-perception remains still unknown so far. With the end of my PhD-thesis I will most likely switch the modell organism.

The Biology of the Inner ear course was therefor a great opportunity for me to look beyond my own nose and horizon of understandings and practicle experience. Before I participated in the course I knew a the people through their papers only, this changed luckily enough during the term of the course. I am now, when I write these letters, at the very end of my PhD-thesis and on the jump for my first PostDoc position and I can clearly say that the contacts I established during the term of the course greatly improved my chances and prospects for PostDoc-positions.

Kristen Fanfetti
Kristen Fantetti, Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
I am a PhD student in Donna Fekete’s lab at Purdue University. My research has focused on investigating if members of the Wnt family of signaling molecules serve as axon guidance cues in the chicken inner ear. Wnt ligands are known to guide axons in several neural systems, but have not been studied in the context of ear development. I developed an in vitro assay to test the responses of chick statoacoustic ganglion neurons to several Wnt ligands and Wnt-inhibitors. This assay is a convenient method for screening which Wnts affect SAG axon outgrowth before performing studies in vivo. The same culture system will also be used to test the responses of SAG neurons to other candidate molecules as potential treatments for sensorineural hearing loss.

Corey Frucht
"I am a 6th-year MD-PhD student in the labs of Joe Santos-Sacchi and Kumar Navaratnam at Yale. I am currently studying the role of microRNA in auditory hair cell regeneration in the chicken inner ear.

As a newcomer to the field, BIE served as an excellent and rigorous introduction to the study of inner ear biology. This course was unquestionably one of the most valuable and enjoyable learning experiences I have had. I have since employed many of the techniques I learned at the course in my own research, and have consulted and/or collaborated with numerous experts who I met at BIE."

Ann Hickox
I'm a PhD student in the lab of Charles Liberman at the Eaton-Peabody Laboratories (EPL) of the Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary. My current research explores how acoustic overexposure that does not result in permanent threshold shifts influences neural coding and perception of sound. Previously, I studied auditory perception in humans, and I have transitioned to animal models of hearing loss in order to investigate the physiological mechanisms underlying change in perception. The Biology of the Inner Ear course was extremely helpful to me in better understanding methods of studying the inner ear in animal models of normal hearing and hearing loss. Moreover, it provided me with a great foundation for more meaningful scientific interaction with my colleagues who study other aspects of hearing and the inner ear.

Kazuaki Homma
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL
I am a postdoc working with Dr. Peter Dallos in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Northwestern University. Currently, I am trying to establish an in vitro motility assay system for studying prestin function in highly controlled conditions. Also, I am studying motor characteristics of outer hair cells expressing mutant prestins for understanding the hearing phenotypes of the transgenic mice. Before joining the lab, I was working on myosin motors with Dr. Mitsuo Ikebe as a graduate student at University of Massachusetts Medical School. When I was a 2nd year student, I picked prestin as my qualifying exam topic. This was how I knew Dallos lab. Although I learned some about the auditory research through the qualifying exam, I was very new to the field when I joined Dallos lab in September 2007. The 2009 BIE course was a great opportunity for me to learn about a wide spectrum of the auditory and vestibular research including the actual experimental techniques, and to build a network of colleagues and established faculties in the field. The auditory system is one of the greatest examples of a highly elaborate biological system where sound signals are converted into electrical signals. I would like to understand the system with a molecular biological point of view.

Hyo Jeong Kim
I am staff research associate in Dr Ebenezer Yamoah's lab at University of California Davis, School of Medicine. My research interests are in ion channels in inner ear, specifically in hair cells and Spiral ganglion neurons. Currently, we are focusing Kv7 potassium channels, and thier cellular and molecular mechanisms in diseased condition.

Jessica Lamb
I’m a postdoc in Richard Chadwick’s lab at the NIDCD. Currently, my research is focused on modeling the travelling wave on the organ of Corti to reveal interesting biophysics and better explain experimental results. We hope to extend this model to DPOAEs. I have also conducted AFM experiments to probe the stiffness of the reticular lamina.

Marcela Lipovsek
I'm a PhD student from Buenos Aires, Argentina. My supervisor is Dr. Ana Belén Elgoyhen. We are interested in studying the characteristics, evolution and development of the efferent innervation to the hair cells. In particular, my research project focuses on the study of the functional consequences of the adaptive evolution of the a9a10 nicotinic acetylcholine receptor present at the efferent synapse.

Marcia M. Mellado Lagarde
My name is Marcia M Mellado Lagarde. I obtained a BSc in Biochemistry (2001) and a MSc in Animal Physiology (2004) at Havana University in Cuba. I did my PhD at the University of Sussex (UK) working in cochlear mechanics with Prof. Ian Russell (2005-2008). I was awarded an IBRO Fellowship for this purpose. I used mouse models to investigate the molecular basis of the cochlear amplifier. Since November 2008 I am doing my first Postdoc working in mouse genetics at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital (Memphis, USA) with Dr Jian Zuo. I am currently studying the roles of supporting cells in cochlear development. I have been awarded a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral fellowship (2009-2013) to fulfill this project that includes this stay at St Jude and a final phase in Sussex working in cochlear mechanics.

Ben Thiede
I am a graduate student in Dr. Jeffrey Corwin’s Lab at the University of Virginia. Our lab is interested in studying regeneration of the sensory hair cells in the vestibular organs of chickens and mice. In particular, my project aims to identify what limits mammalian regeneration and to discover ways to promote sensory cell regeneration.

Simon von Ameln
I am a PhD student under the supervision of Prof Christian Kubisch at the Institute of Human Genetics, University of Cologne, Germany. Besides different hereditary human diseases, we are particularly interested in identifying genes responsible for hereditary hearing loss. Currently, I am investigating a family suffering from a nonsyndromic form of autosomal recessive deafness.

The BIE course 2009 was of great value for me and my project. The course not only offered a broad overview of the “inner ear basics” but also provided up-to-date knowledge about current research. Furthermore, I learned many hands-on techniques which I have now successfully applied in our lab in Cologne.

I greatly enjoyed the BIE course 2009 and the exchange with the other students and researchers in the field. In fact, the new contacts have already led to promising scientific collaborations.

Wei-Ming Yu
I am a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Lisa Goodrich’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School. I obtained my PhD from Rockefeller University where I studied the role of laminin proteins in myelination and the development of the peripheral nervous system. I am currently studying the role of the transcription factor MafB in the development of auditory system. When I took BIE course, I was just new to the field of auditory research with only four months of experience in the Goodrich lab. The BIE course helped build my knowledge of the auditory system and learn useful techniques for my research. It also helped me to establish a network of colleagues in the auditory research field.