Postdoctoral Position in Understanding the Molecular Basis of Acquired Hearing Loss and Developing New Therapeutics
A fully funded POSTDOCTORAL POSITION is available immediately in the Hertzano Laboratory (https://www.hertzanolab.org/), at the Department of Otorhinolaryngology–Head Neck Surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM). The Department is a research-intensive department, ranked 10th in the USA for funding of Departments of Otolaryngology. The laboratory is located within the Institute for Genome Sciences of the UMSOM, at the newly built Health Science Facility III at the heart of the UMSOM campus.
The successful candidate will investigate the molecular basis of acquired hearing loss in a highly translational project centered on developing new treatments for noise-induced and age-related hearing loss and assessing sex differences in hearing. The project is broad and involves techniques ranging from functional and histological evaluation of inner ears from wild type and genetically engineered mice, to cutting-edge techniques in functional genomics.
Requirements: The ideal candidate is a highly ambitious individual with PhD in neuroscience, biochemistry or genetics/genomics. Experience with working with mice is essential. Experience in genomics or genomic analysis is not necessary–but welcomed. The candidate must be a team player, think critically, and must possess excellent oral and written communication skills.
Applications for the position should include a cover letter describing major achievements and skills, a curriculum vitae, writing sample (e.g. first author research paper), and contact information of three professional references. Please send the application material as a single PDF to Dr. Ronna Hertzano, rhertzano@som.umaryland.edu.
Review of applications will continue until the position is filled.
Employer Name: University of Maryland School of Medicine Position Location Baltimore, MD, USA.
Key words: Neuroscience, hearing loss, aging, molecular biology, functional genomics, mouse model.
Disclaimers: UMB is an equal opportunity employer.
Salary is highly competitive with accordance to NIH guidelines and includes fringe benefits as per University of Maryland policy.
Selected representative publications:
1. Elkon R, Milon B, Morrison L, Shah M, Vijayakumar S, Racherla M, Leitch CC, Silipino L, Hadi S, Weiss-Gayet M, Barras E, Schmid CD, Ait-Lounis A, Barnes A, Song Y, Eisenman DJ, Eliyahu E, Frolenkov GI, Strome SE, Durand B, Zaghloul NA, Jones SM, Reith W and Hertzano R. (2015) RFX transcription factors are essential for hearing in mice. Nat Commun. Oct 15;6:8549. PMCID: PMC4634137.
2. Milon B, Mitra S, Song Y, Margulies Z, Casserly R, Drake V, Mong JA, Depireux DA and Hertzano R (2018) The impact of biological sex on the response to noise and otoprotective therapies against acoustic injury in mice. Biology of Sex Differences. Mar 12;9(1):12.
3. Chessum L*, Matern M*, Kelly MC, Johnson SL, Ogawa Y, Milon B, McMurray M, Driver EC, Parker A, Song Y, Codner G, Esapa CT, Prescott J, Trent G, Wells S, Dragich AK, Frolenkov GI, Kelley MW, Marcotti W, Brown SDM, Elkon R, Bowl MR, and Hertzano R (2018) Ikzf2/helios is a key transcriptional regulator of outer hair cell maturation. Nature Nov;563(7733):696-700. PMCID: PMC6542691
4. Matern MS, Milon M, Lipford EL, McMurray M, Ogawa Y, Tkaczuk A, Song Y, Elkon R and Hertzano R (2020) GFI1 Functions to Repress Neuronal Gene Expression in the Developing Inner Ear Hair Cells. Development 2020 Sep 11;147(17):dev186015. doi: 10.1242/dev.186015.
5. Hertzano R, Gwilliam K, Rose KP, Milon B and Matern M (2020) Cell Type-Specific Expression Analysis of the Inner Ear – A Technical Report. The Laryngoscope (Triologic Thesis) Jun 24.
To apply for this job please visit som.umaryland.edu..
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.
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