October 2023
The PHRC is excited to announce a new Certificate in Hearing and Vision Sciences! The Certificate in Hearing and Vision Sciences (HVS Doctoral Certificate) is designed to train the next generation of hearing and vision researchers both in basic and translational research. This goal will be accomplished by offering additional coursework and opportunities for collaborative research and mentorship with basic and translational researchers. The certificate will be available to students who are pursuing a doctoral degree in any relevant graduate program at the University of Pittsburgh. This program will attract and train top graduate students and leverage the strengths of our world class hearing and vision sciences programs. As such, this program will train new graduate students, serve the needs of our faculty, and further promote the highly collaborative academic research environment that is a hallmark of our school and university. The Departments of Otolaryngology, Ophthalmology and the Brain Institute will fund up to five students per year (stipend + fringe). A website describing all the details will be launched in the next few weeks.
October 12, 2023
We are happy to announce that Dr. Melissa McGovern just received notification for an award from the Hearing Health Foundation. This is an Emerging Research Grant and is the Neil Segil Memorial award for hair cell regeneration. This prestigious award will give her the opportunity to establish a new mouse model to further investigate hair cell regeneration. We're excited to see Dr. McGovern's work develop!
August 7, 2023
The PHRC is excited to announce the promotion of Manoj Kumar, PhD from Research Assistant Professor to Assistant Professor in the non-tenure track. Among his many accomplishments, Manoj has been consistently publishing high impact papers, received foundation grants, and has been developing an exciting independent research program that focuses on brain plasticity and hearing loss. Congratulations Manoj!
February 2, 2023
We are very excited to announce that Melissa McGovern, PhD recently accepted a tenure-track position in the PHRC and Department of Otolaryngology. Melissa will start her lab here in May 2023. Melissa’s research addresses fundamental questions in the developmental biology and regeneration of the cochlea.
Please join us in welcoming her to the PHRC!
December 7, 2022
We are very pleased to share that Dr. Michele Insanally was awarded the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO) Young Investigator Award. This is a very prestigious award that recognizes accomplishment and promise in research related to otolaryngology. Dr. Insanally’s impressive work is focused on the study of brain circuits that allow us to learn how to hear during normal and pathological conditions, such as hearing loss and improvement of cochlear implants. Check it out here! Congratulations Michele!
September 18, 2022
We’re pleased to announce that Dr. Manoj Kumar just received a second-year of funding from the Hearing Health Foundation. This is a great step towards his independence and will help him collect all the preliminary results he needs for submitting a strong R01 sometime next year!
Grant Award Title: Signaling Mechanisms of Auditory Cortex Plasticity After Noise-Induced Hearing Loss
Agency: Emerging Research Grant from Hearing Health Foundation
Role: PI
Award period: 10/2022 - 09/2023
September 1, 2022
We’re happy to announce Dr. Thanos Tzounopoulos’ new award with Co-PI Dr. Ai Huiwang from the University of Virginia and Co-I Dr. Manoj Kumar.
Grant Award Title: Fluorescent Indicators for Imaging Synaptic Zinc in Cortical Sound Processing
Agency: NIH/NIBIB R01 EB033172
Role: Multiple PI, Co-PI with Dr. Ai Huiwang of University of Virginia
Dr. Manoj Kumar (Co-I)
Award period: 01/2023 - 12/2027
June 7, 2022
We’re excited to share that our newest PHRC addition Dr. Chris Cunningham, Assistant Professor- just received two awards: the Competitive Medical Research Fund (CMRF) grant and PA Lions Grant. A very impressive achievement, and especially for his first year!
Grant Award Title: Investigating the role of the Wolfram Syndrome-associated gene WFS1 in the cochlea
Agency: University of Pittsburgh Office of Research, Competitive Medical Research Award
Role: PI
Award period: 07/2022 - 06/2023
June 1, 2022
We’re pleased to announce Dr. Ross Williamson’s new R01 award with funding starting July 1!
Grant Award Title: Extratelencephalic contributions to auditory categorization
Agency: NIH/NIDCD R01 DC020459
Role: PI
Award period: 07/2022 - 06/2027
November 11, 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Manoj Kumar on being selected as this year’s winner of the Albert C. Muse Endowed Research Award. Another win for him!
Grant Award Title: Albert C. Muse Endowed Research Award
Agency: Eye and Ear Foundation of Pittsburgh
Role: PI
Award period: 04/2022 - 03/2023
August 4, 2021
We’re very happy to announce that Manoj Kumar, newly appointed Res Ass Prof in our group, received the Hearing Health Foundation award to study “Signaling Mechanisms of Auditory Cortex Plasticity After Noise-Induced Hearing Loss.”
Grant Award Title: Signaling Mechanisms of Auditory Cortex Plasticity After Noise-Induced Hearing Loss
Agency: Emerging Research Grant from Hearing Health Foundation
Role: PI
Award period: 10/2021 - 09/2022
July 1, 2021
The PHRC is pleased to announce the recruitment of Dr. Chris Cunningham. Chris Cunningham, PhD, recently accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Otolaryngology and the PHRC.
Dr. Cunningham earned his PhD in Neuroscience at the University California and is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Scripps Research Institute and Johns Hopkins University under the supervision of Ulrich Muller, PhD.
Employing a multifaceted experimental toolkit that includes mouse genetics, biochemistry, fluorescent and electron microscopy and cell and tissue culture, Dr. Cunningham investigates molecular and cellular mechanisms of normal auditory processing, that elucidate the biologicial origins and pathophysiologies of hearing loss, and that contribute to the development of the novel therapies for auditory disorders.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Cunningham to the PHRC!
June 6, 2021
We’re very pleased to share that Dr. Ross Williamson will be awarded the Klingenstein-Simons Award - a very prestigious and competitive foundation award – for his proposed project, titled “Brain-wide cortical circuits for sensory-guided behavior”
Grant Award Title: Brain-wide cortical circuits for sensory-guided behavior
Agency: Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund
Role: PI
Award period: 07/01/2021 – 06/30/2024
September 1, 2020
A BIG congratulations to Dr. Ross Williamson for receiving the Hearing Health Foundation award for his project titled, “Characterizing tinnitus-induced changes in auditory corticofugal networks.” The goal of this proposal is to identify whether the presence of tinnitus leads to structural plasticity in the corticofugal auditory system, and how this re-wiring alters sensory information processing. We’re excited to see Dr. Williamson’s work develop!
Grant Award Title: Characterizing tinnitus-induced changes in auditory corticofugal networks
Agency: Emerging Research Grant from Hearing Health Foundation
Role: PI
Award period: 10/01/2020 – 09/30/2021
June 1, 2020
The PHRC is pleased to announce our second recruit, Dr. Michele Insanally!
Michele Insanally, PhD, recently accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Otolaryngology and the PHRC. Dr. Insanally earned her PhD in Neuroscience at the University of California Berkeley and is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at New York University School of Medicine with Robert Froemke studying auditory perception.
By incorporating a wide range of techniques – rodent behavior, electrophysiology, computational modeling, circuit mapping, and optogenetics - Dr. Insanally studies neural circuits that construct flexible neuronal representations during adaptive behaviors, how these behaviors are gated during learning, and how the population dynamics underlying these behaviors is disrupted in hearing disorders and seeks to identify neural coding principles underlying perceptual flexibility in large-scale auditory networks.
Please join us in giving her a warm welcome to the PHRC!
June 1, 2019
The PHRC is pleased to announce the recruitment of Dr. Ross Williamson!
Ross Williamson, PhD, recently accepted a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the Department of Otolaryngology and the PHRC. Dr. Williamson earned his PhD in Computational Neuroscience and Machine Learning at the University College London and is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear in Harvard Medical School under the supervision of Daniel Polley, PhD.
Using the mouse auditory system, cutting-edge computational auditory neuroscience methods, and statistical neural data analysis, Dr. Williamson investigates the interactions between the neocortex and its various axonal targets, and their role in sound perception.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Ross Williamson to the PHRC!