ARO Pioneer Award in Basic Science
This award recognizes a body of work representing a significant advance in hearing, vestibular or related science, and established in the awardee’s own lab. The topic should be related to the scientific interests of the Association as represented at the annual ARO meeting. As the award is for a body of work, the award may be shared among investigators who have worked as a team.
CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: ARO PIONEER AWARD IN BASIC SCIENCE
The Association for Research in Otolaryngology will start accepting nominations for the ARO Pioneer Award in Basic Science in August 2022. The deadline has been EXTENDED to Friday, October 7, 2022.
ABOUT THE ARO PIONEER AWARD IN BASIC SCIENCE
This award recognizes a body of work representing a significant advance in hearing, vestibular or related science, and established in the awardee’s own lab. The topic should be related to the scientific interests of the Association as represented at the annual ARO meeting. As the award is for a body of work, the award may be shared among investigators who have worked as a team. The awardee(s) will be asked to give a scientific talk at the 2023 meeting (one per award).
REMINDER: Nominees, nominators and letter-writers are not required to be ARO members. Self-nominations are not accepted.
Please read carefully before submitting.
NOMINATION Requirements:
Nominations should include the following:
- A curriculum vitae (CV; or CVs for multi-investigator teams)
- A nomination letter (1-2 supporting letters; letters may have multiple signatories)
Nominations are selected by the ARO Award Committee and submitted to ARO Council for approval. A nominee’s package will be considered for up to 3 years in sequence; the package can be updated for the second and third years. Nominations submitted in previous years without meeting the new standards should be resubmitted.
2021 Awardees:
Congratulations to Drs. Jeffrey Holt, Andrew Griffith, and Gwenaelle Geleoc for receiving the ARO 2021 Pioneer Award! This award will be presented at the ARO 2021 Virtual MidWinter Meeting. Please see below for more about their work and to learn more about the recipients.
Awarded for their joint work leading to significant advance in hearing and vestibular science: the identification of the ion channel proteins (TMC proteins) that sense sound and head motions in the inner ear, and water displacement in lateral line organs. This highly significant discovery is the direct product of a decade or more of innovative and virtuoso experiments that reflect scientific vision, acumen, and tenacity. The identity of the transduction channels has both fundamental and translational importance for therapy for inner ear genetic disorders.
Dr. Jeffrey Holt
Harvard University
Dr. Gwenaelle Geleoc
Harvard University
Dr. Andrew Griffith
University of Tennessee Health Science Center
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.