The ARO Membership Committee is proud to share a new initiative called the ARO International Lecture Series. This series will highlight speakers from around the world and give them a platform to discuss their career and research. See below for past and upcoming event details!
Chris Plack was educated at the University of Cambridge, where he obtained a BA in Natural Sciences in 1987 and a PhD in 1990. He worked as a postdoctoral research fellow for two years at the University of Minnesota and for two years at the University of Sussex before being awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 1994. He moved to the University of Essex in 1998 and was promoted to Chair in 2001. He moved again to Lancaster University in 2005 before obtaining his present position of Ellis Llwyd Jones Professor of Audiology at the University of Manchester in 2008. Chris currently divides his time between Manchester and Lancaster, where he has a part-time position as Professor of Auditory Neuroscience. Chris has published over 130 peer-reviewed journal articles, 13 book chapters, an introductory textbook on hearing, and two edited volumes. In 2003 he was elected a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.
Rachael completed a PhD in cancer and hematology at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. In 2001, Rachael began working with Prof Graeme Clark at the Bionic Ear Institute in the areas of hearing therapeutics, gene therapy and cochlear implants. She is now a principal research fellow and associate professor at the Bionics Institute, and deputy head of the Medical Bionics Department at the University of Melbourne. Her main goal is to develop innovative strategies to improve precision of neural modulation, including optogenetic-based approaches for the cochlear implant, restoration of vision and other neurological conditions of the central and peripheral nervous systems.