Senior Auditory Neuroscientist Recruitment at Rutgers University
The Rutgers Brain Health Institute (BHI; https://brainhealthinstitute.rutgers.edu ) and the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School (https://rwjms.rutgers.edu/departments/otolaryngology-head-and-neck-surgery/about) are recruiting a tenured or tenure track faculty member at the Associate or Full Professor level to expand our research portfolio in auditory neuroscience, broadly defined to include animal- or human subjects-based research programs. The successful faculty recruit will be part of the Rutgers Auditory Neuroscience Research Initiative (RANRI; https://sites.rutgers.edu/ranri/). Along with existing auditory scientists at Rutgers (including Todd Mowery, Justin Yao, Tejbeer Kaur, Kelvin Kwan, Kasia Bieszczad, Robin Davis and P. Ashley Wackym) the successful faculty recruit will position us to be competitive for center/program-type NIH as well as T32 grant award mechanisms from the NIDCD/NIH.
The successful candidate must have a PhD, MD or equivalent doctoral degree as well as a research program with currently active federal funding addressing key questions regarding auditory neuroscience. We offer a competitive salary and an excellent start-up package. Candidates for senior faculty position can be considered for an Associate Director role, and a leadership position overseeing the growth of auditory neuroscience research area within the BHI as well as Chief, Division of Research, Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery, Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.
With over 300 Rutgers neuroscience faculty laboratories engaged in basic and clinical research, and proximity to New York, Princeton and Philadelphia neuroscience communities, BHI offers tremendous collaborative opportunities and core facilities to support and grow an active research program. The NIH-funded CTSA at Rutgers offers unique opportunities to speed the translation of research discoveries into improved patient care. Outstanding core facilities will support this position, including a new research-dedicated 3T Prisma MRI scanner, a human behavioral testing core and a gene editing core. Rutgers-Piscataway has the world’s largest university-based cell and DNA biorepository, Infinity BiologiX, to facilitate genetic studies of human brain function and dysfunction.
Rutgers University is committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. Rutgers, BHI and the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery specifically are actively working to ensure that our faculty composition reflects diversity. We especially welcome applications from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM (including women, Black, Latinx, Indigenous and LGBTQ+ scientists).
To become a part of our vibrant research community, applicants should submit a CV and a brief statement of research accomplishments and plans to Dr. P. Ashley Wackym, Co-Chair of the Search Committee, at: ashley.wackym@rutgers.edu; Dr. Kasia M. Bieszczad, Co-Chair of the Search Committee, at: kasia.bie@rutgers.edu; and copy the BHI bhi@bhi.rutgers.edu
It is university policy to provide equal employment opportunity to all its employees and applicants for employment regardless of their race, creed, color, national origin, age, ancestry, nationality, marital or domestic partnership or civil union status, sex, pregnancy, gender identity or expression, disability status, liability for military service, protected veteran status, affectional or sexual orientation, atypical cellular or blood trait, genetic information (including the refusal to submit to genetic testing), or any other category protected by law. As an institution, we value diversity of background and opinion, and prohibit discrimination or harassment on the basis of any legally protected class in the areas of hiring, recruitment, promotion, transfer, demotion, training, compensation, pay, fringe benefits, layoff, termination or any other terms and conditions of employment. For additional information please see the Non-Discrimination Statement at the following web address: http://uhr.rutgers.edu/non-discrimination-statement .
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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