Research

Over the next five years, our goals include:

• Develop novel therapies for hearing loss and tinnitus
• Recruit new researchers with expertise in artificial intelligence, stem cell therapy, and the central nervous system
• Design better hearing aids and cochlear implants 
• Develop liquid biopsy of the inner ear to enable precise diagnosis
• Improve methods for brain and inner ear imaging 
• Invent surgical and endoscopic tools for the cochlea
• Accelerate work on preventing hearing loss from toxic medications 
• Determine how certain tumors, like vestibular schwannoma, cause hearing loss

• Invent treatments for all forms of hearing loss and tinnitus and bring those treatments to patients.
• Advance our experimental diagnostic methods into mainstream clinical use.
• Expand the next generation of researchers in sensory science 
• Leverage hearing science to benefit other neurological diseases
• Reduce the burden of hearing loss on the aging population

Across labs, SICHL uses advanced tools and techniques—such as high-resolution imaging, genetics, molecular biology, drug discovery, electrophysiology, liquid biopsy diagnostics, stem cell models, and computational modeling—to understand hearing loss mechanisms and move toward prevention and restoration.

Together, these efforts span from basic science (how hearing works) to translational strategies (new diagnostics and therapies), all aimed at preventing, treating, and eventually reversing hearing loss.

Sensorineural hearing loss is a common form of hereditary hearing loss. Although geneticists have made progress in identifying deafness genes, the majority affect peripheral function and very few are specific to neural function or central auditory processing. There is currently a large gap in our understanding of the genetics of neural auditory and vestibular function in vertebrates.

The inner ear cochlea is an intricate organ required for hearing, composed of a mosaic of sensor hair cells organized like a checkerboard. This precise patterning is governing by a process termed planar cell polarity. As mechanoreceptors critical for hearing and balance functions, hair cells are crowned by stereociliary bundles functioning to detecting sound and motion. To pinpoint how these complex functions are regulating, investigators in SICHL employ molecular, imaging, and electrophysiological approaches to dissect the mechanisms, with the ultimate goal of curing hearing loss and balance dysfunction.

We aim to study novel treatments for chronic suppurative otitis media, the leading cause of permanently hearing loss in children of the developing world. It’s characterized by a chronic discharging middle ear. We are designing nanomedicine approach that can target the dormant bacterial cells that are the cause for relapse of this infection.