Doris Wu, Ph.D.
Doris Wu grew up in Hong Kong, where her mother was a grade-school teacher and her father a civil servant. She has loved biology ever since high school and she came to the United States for college, majoring in Biology and Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point. Still passionate about biology but unsure about her next career move after graduation, she worked as a laboratory technician at the Department of Physiology, School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, where she later obtained her master’s degree in 1978, studying endocrinology of the reproductive system. She then moved across town to the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA) to further her graduate work in studying neuronal and glia interactions. Doris received her PhD from now the Department of Neurobiology in 1983. After a brief postdoctoral fellowship at the Mental Retardation Center at UCLA, she joined Dr. Constance Cepko’s laboratory at the Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School as a postdoctoral fellow. There, she studied cell type determination in the mammalian retina, focusing on the development of a subtype of amacrine cells.
As a sensory system developmental neurobiologist, Doris was drawn to the beauty and complexity of the inner ear structure and although she had never received formal training in this field, she accepted her first independent position at the Intramural program of NIDCD in 1993. She set out to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying the formation of the inner ear. She rose through the ranks at the NIH, and now holds the position of Chief in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, NIDCD. She views her scientific journey as deeply rewarding and complementary to that of many others in the development field who have identified some of the key genes and molecular pathways underlying the formation of this amazing organ. The knowledge gained from these discoveries continues to provide the basis for hair cell regeneration research and for understanding the etiology of hereditary deafness.
Doris has been a single mom since her son was 10 months old. Managing work and family life balance was a challenge when her son was growing up. Now, when she is not visiting her 102-year-old mother in Hong Kong, she enjoys cooking and taking walks while talking to life-long friends in her spare time.
Kirupa Suthakar, PhD - Dr Kirupa Suthakar is a postdoctoral fellow at NIH/NIDCD, having formerly trained as a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School and doctoral student at Garvan Institute of Medical Research/UNSW Australia. Kirupa's interest in the mind and particular fascination by how we are able to perceive the world around us led her to pursue a research career in auditory neuroscience. To date, Kirupa's research has broadly focused on neurons within the auditory efferent circuit, which allow the brain to modulate incoming sound signals at the ear. Kirupa is active member of the spARO community, serving as the Chair Elect for 2021.
Charles C. Della Santina, PhD MD is a Professor of Otolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery and Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he directs the Johns Hopkins Cochlear Implant Center and the Johns Hopkins Vestibular NeuroEngineering Laboratory.
Andrew Griffith received his MD and PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 1992. He completed his general surgery internship and a residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at the University of Michigan in 1998. He also completed a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Human Genetics as part of his training at the University of Michigan. In 1998, he joined the Division of Intramural Research (DIR) in the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD). He served as a senior investigator, the chief of the Molecular Biology and Genetics Section, the chief of the Otolaryngology Branch, and the director of the DIR, as well as the deputy director for Intramural Clinical Research across the NIH Intramural Research Program. His research program identifies and characterizes molecular and cellular mechanisms of normal and disordered hearing and balance in humans and mouse models. Two primary interests of his program have been hearing loss associated with enlargement of the vestibular aqueduct, and the function of TMC genes and proteins. The latter work lead to the discovery that the deafness gene product TMC1 is a component of the hair cell sensory transduction channel. Since July of 2020, he has served as the Senior Associate Dean of Research and a Professor of Otolaryngology and Physiology in the College of Medicine at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
Gwenaëlle S. G. Géléoc obtained a PhD in Sensory Neurobiology from the University of Sciences in Montpellier (France) in 1996. She performed part of her PhD training at the University of Sussex, UK where she characterized sensory transduction in vestibular hair cells and a performed a comparative study between vestibular and cochlear hair cells. Gwenaelle continued her training as an electrophysiologist at University College London studying outer hair cell motility and at Harvard Medical School studying modulation of mechanotransduction in vestibular hair cells. As an independent investigator at the University of Virginia, she expanded this work and characterized the developmental acquisition of sensory transduction in mouse vestibular hair cells, the developmental acquisition of voltage-sensitive conductances in vestibular hair cells and the tonotopic gradient in the acquisition of sensory transduction in the mouse cochlea. This work along with quantitative spatio-temporal studies performed on several hair cell mechanotransduction candidates lead her to TMC1 and 2 and long-term collaborations with Andrew Griffith and Jeff Holt. Dr. Géléoc is currently Assistant Professor of Otolaryngology, at Boston Children’s Hospital where she continues to study molecular players involved in the development and function of hair cells of the inner ear and develops new therapies for the treatment of deafness and balance, with a particular focus on Usher syndrome.
Jeff Holt earned a doctorate from the Department of Physiology at the University of Rochester in 1995 for his studies of inward rectifier potassium channels in saccular hair cells. He went on to a post-doctoral position in the Neurobiology Department at Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, where he characterized sensory transduction and adaptation in hair cells and developed a viral vector system to transfect cultured hair cells. Dr. Holt’s first faculty position was in the Neuroscience Department at the University of Virginia. In 2011 the lab moved to Boston Children’s Hospital / Harvard Medical School. Dr. Holt is currently a Professor in the Departments of Otolaryngology and Neurology in the F.M. Kirby Neurobiology Center. Dr. Holt and his team have been studying sensory transduction in auditory and vestibular hair cells over the past 20 years, with particular focus on TMC1 and TMC2 over the past 12 years. This work lead to the discovery that TMC1 forms the hair cell transduction channel. His work also focuses on development gene therapy strategies for genetic hearing loss.