Ruth Anne Eatock, PhD Professor of Neurobiology
Ruth Anne trained in sensory neurobiology at McGill (M.Sc.), Caltech (Ph.D.) and MIT (postdoctoral fellowship), and held faculty positions at the University of Rochester, Baylor College of Medicine, and Harvard Medical School / Massachusetts Eye & Ear Infirmary, before moving to Chicago in January 2014 . She has studied biophysical mechanisms underlying sensory analysis in several model inner ear organs, with a current focus on vestibular sensory epithelia in mammals.
Selina Baeza Loya, BA PhD Candidate, Neurobiology graduate program
Selina completed her BA in Cognitive Science at Rice University. She is currently investigating the role of diverse voltage gated sodium currents in the formation of different firing patterns and variable spike timing regularity in mouse vestibular ganglion neurons. Using isolated neurons, she has showed that sodium currents come resurgent and persistent forms in addition to the traditional transient one. We hypothesize that these currents increase firing and spike timing regularity, and likely have strong implication for sensory encoding in the vestibular inner ear.
Selina successfully defended her thesis in May 2022 and in September will start a postdoc in Dave Raible’s group at University of Washington – congratulations on both counts to Selina!
Hannah Martin, BS PhD Candidate, Neurobiology graduate program
Hannah completed her BS in Biology and Chemistry at St. John’s University, where she studied the structure and function of TRPP channels. She is currently investigating the potassium currents that underlie differences in stimulus encoding in type I and II hair cells, with particular attention to the low-voltage-activated potassium conductance (g-KL) in type I hair cells.
Christopher Luong, BS PhD Student, Computational Neuroscience graduate program
Christopher completed his BS in Physiology and Neuroscience from the University of California at San Diego. He is currently interested in the functional differences of the various utricular afferents, specifically comparing how different morphological differences between calyx, bouton, and dimorphic afferents carry unique vestibular information, as well as comparing striolar and extrastriolar afferents.
Antonia (Toni) González Garrido, PhD Senior Research Associate
Toni obtained her PhD at the Instituto de Fisiología, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México, where she studied acid-sensing ion channels in auditory afferent neurons in the group of Dr. Enrique Soto. She was a Catedratica Conacyt fellow at the National Institute of Genomic Medicine in Mexico City, where she studied punctual mutations in the KCNQ1 channel which causes cardiac arrhythmias.
Toni has just moved to a research position at the National Institute of Genomic Medicine in Mexico City – Congratulations, Toni!
Omar López-Ramírez, PhD Senior Research Associate
Omar obtained his PhD at the Instituto de Fisiología, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, México, where he characterized the influence of several toxins on ion channels in the group of Dr. Enrique Soto. Recently, Omar was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Dr. Ricardo Felix, where he studied cell biological aspects of voltage-gated calcium channels and their modulation by small GTPases.
Omar has recently moved to a research position at Instituto de Oftalmología Fundación de Asistencia Privada Conde de Valenciana in Mexico City. Congratulations, Omar!
Kazuya Ono, PhD Senior Research Associate
Kazuya obtained his PhD at Kyoto University, Japan, where he found a role for Fgfr1-Frs2/3 signaling in cochlear hair cell development, and also found that post-mitotic supporting cells are capable of re-entering cell cycle via manipulation of p27kip1. Kazuya then undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at NIDCD (Bethesda, MD, USA), where he expanded his research interest to the vestibular system and found that differential retinoic signaling mediated by Cyp26b1 expression provides a critical cue for zonal patterning of vestibular sensory organs. His goal is to understand the physiology of vestibular organs, which ultimately affects many brain functions such as reflexes, spatial orientation, and self-motion, which requires multimodal processing.
Active Collaborations
Anna Lysakowski (University of Illinois, Chicago)
Rob Raphael (Rice University)
Jennifer Stone (University of Washington, Seattle)
Basile Tarchini (Jackson Labs), Kathy Cullen (Johns Hopkins), Katie Kindt (NIDCD)
Alumni
Antonia (Toni) González Garrido, PhD Researcher in Medical Sciences, National Institute of Genomic Medicine, Mexico City, Mexico
Omar López-Ramírez, PhD Researcher, Unidad de Investigación, Instituto de Oftalmología Fundación de Asistencia Privada Conde de Valenciana, I.A.P. ®, Mexico City, Mexico
Karolina Simcic, BS M.S. program in Applied Mathematics, NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Sonya J. Malavez Cajigas, BS Medical school, Ponce Health Sciences University, Puerto Rico
Vicente Lumbreras Cruz, PhD Global Market Access & Pricing Lead,
Florian Christov, MD Otorhinolaryngology, University Hospital RWTH Aachen, Germany
Koh Koizumi, MD PhD Assistant Professor, Dept. of Otolaryngology, Akita University, Japan
Will J. McLean, PhD Co-founder and Vice-President, Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Frequency Therapeutics, Inc.
Gang Q. Li, PhD Scientist at Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, Boston
Jocelyn Songer, PhD Chief Scientific Officer at ANACAPA CLINICAL RESEARCH, INC
Xiao-Ping Liu, PhD Postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Xiaoquin Wang, Johns Hopkins University
Michaela Meyer, PhD Postdoctoral fellow with Dr. Alexander Rotenberg, Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard
Radha Kalluri, PhD, Assistant Professor, Otolaryngology, USC, Los Angeles CA
Jingbing Xue, B Med, PhD, Associate Professor, Dept. of Imaging Sciences, University of Rochester Medical Center
Karen M. Hurley, PhD, Assistant Professor, Otolaryngology, Drexel University College of Medicine
Julian Wooltorton, PhD, Associate Director, Reaction Biology, Philadelphia
Hong Bao, MD, Research Fellow, Biology, University of Oklahoma, Norman
Melissa A. Vollrath, PhD Assistant Professor, Neurology, McGill University
Weng-Hoe (Erich) Wong, MD, PhD Assistant Professor, Otolaryngology, Akita University, Japan
Anne Aubert, PhD Maître de Conférences, Biology, University of La Rochelle, France
Alfons Rüsch, PhD [Assistant Professor, Sensory Biophysics, University of Tübingen, Deceased, 2002]
James Way-Young Chen, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Neurology, VAGLAHS/UCLA\
Jeffrey R. Holt, PhD, Professor, Otolaryngology and Neuroscience, Children’s Hospital, Boston