Research advisory panel

Our Research Sub-Committee meets quarterly (January, April, July and October) to consider applications for funding.

Research advisory panel

• Professor Andrew King PhD FMedSci (Chief Research Adviser)
• Professor Steve Brown PhD FMedSci
• Dr Robert P Carlyon PhD
• Professor Tim Griffith PhD FMedSci
• Professor Alan Palmer BSc PhD
• Professor Chris Plack PhD FmedSci
• Professor Guy Richardson PhD
• Professor Shakeel Saeed MD FRCS (ORL)

Role of Research Advisers

• Advising on Deafness Research UK research priorities
• Reviewing and monitoring applications within areas of individual expertise
• Stimulating and encouraging work in areas of individual expertise
• Assisting and supporting the liaison with potential major donors
• Advising on Deafness Research UK literature
• Acting as a spokesperson for Deafness Research UK
• Leading Deafness Research UK-supported workshops and events within areas of individual expertise
• Occasionally, providing advice on more complex queries received by the Deafness Research UK Information Service

In addition to the above, our Chief Research Adviser is responsible for presenting details of all of the grant applications, reviewers’ comments and advisers’ recommendations to the Research Sub-Committee which meets quarterly to make recommendations to the Board of Trustees. Panel members are asked to serve a maximum of five years.

Biographies

Professor Andrew King PhD FMedSci - Chief Research Adviser

Andrew King is currently a Wellcome Principal Research Fellow and Professor of Neurophysiology at the University of Oxford. He heads the Auditory Neuroscience Group in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics and is also a Fellow of Merton College and Director of the Wellcome Trust Doctoral Training Programme in Neuroscience at the University of Oxford.

Andrew’s research involves an interdisciplinary approach, which combines behavioural, physiological, anatomical and computational methods, to the study of auditory and multisensory processing. He is particularly interested in the capacity of the hearing centres of the brain to adapt over different timescales to changes in their inputs, produced as a result of learning and experience or in response to hearing loss and its restoration. Andrew is a scientific advisor to Deafness Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and Action on Hearing Loss (formerly RNID). He is a Review Editor for the Journal of Physiology, Associate Editor for the Journal of Neuroscience and Review Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. In 2011, he was elected to a Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Steve Brown PhD FMedSci

Steve Brown is Director of the Medical Research Council’s Mammalian Genetics Unit at Harwell, Oxfordshire, UK.

His research interests cover mouse functional genomics, including the use of mouse mutagenesis and comparative genomic analysis to study the genetic basis of disease and to develop pre-clinical disease models. A particular focus has been the use of mouse models to study the molecular basis of genetic deafness. Along with Karen Steel, he discovered myosin VIIA as the gene underlying the shaker1 mutant, one of the first deafness genes to be identified. Subsequently, he has developed interests in the protein complexes that are involved with stereocilia elongation in hair cells in the inner ear. More recently, he has initiated a substantial research effort in the genetics of otitis media or glue ear, a common cause of hearing loss in children, employing mouse models to elaborate the key genetic pathways involved and develop novel therapeutic strategies.

He has served on numerous advisory boards and currently is on the Scientific Advisory Boards for the Centre Intégratif de Génomique (CIG), University of Lausanne and the Helmholtz Centrum Munchen, Germany and is also a member of Council at the Nuffield Council for Bioethics. He is an International Advisor to the International Symposium on Recent Advances in Otitis Media. He is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation and in 2009 was the recipient of the Genetics Society Medal

Dr Robert P Carlyon PhD

Bob Carlyon is a Programme Leader at the MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit at the University of Cambridge. He is also a Fellow of Clare Hall, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.

Dr Carlyon's research interests include the perceptual segregation of multiple sounds presented at the same time and the perceptual organisation of sounds presented sequentially. Both of these are important for the ability to listen to and understand speech in social situations. One area of research focuses on the way cochlear implant wearers might be able to perceptually segregate patterns of electrical stimulation that are applied to different electrodes. Dr Carlyon has also investigated the effects of waveform shape on implant users' sensitivity to electrical stimulation, and the ability of people fitted with an implant in each ear to process small timing differences between the two ears.

Professor Tim Griffiths PhD FMedSci

Timothy Griffiths is Wellcome Senior Clinical Fellow and Professor of Cognitive Neurology at Newcastle University.

His research primarily concerns human complex sound processing; the analysis of auditory patterns relevant to speech, music and environmental-sound analysis. He studies deficits in complex sound processing in patients with brain lesions, functional imaging data from normal subjects (fMRI and MEG), and depth electrode recordings from the auditory cortex of neurosurgical patients. The functional imaging is carried out at the Wellcome Centre for Imaging Neuroscience in London, where he is a Principal, and the depth electrode data is acquired at Iowa, where he is adjunct Professor. These studies allow inference about normal complex-sound processing mechanisms. Other work explores abnormal complex-sound analysis in developmental and degenerative disorders, and brain mechanisms for tinnitus and auditory hallucinations. In 2011, he was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences.

Professor Alan Palmer BSc PhD

Alan Palmer is the Assistant Director and Programme Leader at the MRC Institute of Hearing Research. He is also Special Professor of Neuroscience, School of Biomedical Sciences, University of Nottingham and a member of the MRC College of Experts and the RNID Advisory Board.

Alan Palmer received his first degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Birmingham UK in 1972 and his PhD in Communication and Neuroscience from the University of Keele UK in 1977. After three years as a postdoctoral researcher at Keele he established his own laboratory at the National Institute for Medical Research in London. This was followed by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the University of Sussex before taking up his current position in 1986. He heads a research team that uses neurophysiological techniques to study the way the brain processes sound. He also has responsibility for major technical developments such as a noise reducing sound system for fMRI, loudspeaker arrays for psychophysics and equipment for animal behavioural laboratories.

Professor Chris Plack PhD

Chris Plack is currently the Ellis Llwyd Jones Professor of Audiology, and Head of the Human Communication and Deafness Division, at the University of Manchester since July 2008.

The broad aims of Chris’s work are to understand how sounds are processed by the ear and the brain to give rise to sensations, and to develop accurate diagnostic tests and hearing aids that correct for the perceptual deficits experienced by people with hearing loss.

Chris Plack’s background is in psychoacoustics, the academic discipline that examines the relations between the physical characteristics of sounds and their perceptual effects. His interests in this area include the processing of sound in the cochlea, and the perception of musical pitch. In recent years he has developed an interest in brain imaging, using both electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure the physiological responses to sounds. In 2003 he was elected Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America.

Professor Guy Richardson PhD

Guy Richardson is a Professorial Fellow at the Hearing Research Centre, School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex. His research is focused on the development of the cochlea.

Professor Richardson and his colleagues are working on the cellular and molecular basis of hearing, deafness and hair-cell regeneration. He is interested in understanding how the tectorial membrane, a specialised extracellular matrix unique to the inner ear, is produced and how it contributes to the tuning properties of the cochlea. He is also working on providing a molecular characterisation of proteins that are associated with the surface of the hair bundle and dissecting the signalling pathways that lead to the regeneration of sensory hair cells in the avian inner ear. He has published his research findings widely in many highly-regarded scientific journals and is a recognised expert in many aspects of hearing research.

Professor Shakeel Saeed MD FRCS (ORL)

Shakeel Saeed was appointed Professor of Otology/Neuro-otology, UCL Ear Institute and Consultant ENT and Skullbase Surgeon, The Royal National Throat, Nose & Ear Hospital, Royal Free Hospital and National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in September 2008.

Professor Saeed’s special interests include neuro-otology, balance disorders, skull base surgery and cochlear implantation. He qualified from Guy's and King's College Hospitals, London, completing his Registrar training in ENT in Manchester. Professor Saeed has an international recognition as an Otology Research Fellow in San Francisco, USA, studying cochlear nerve growth factor receptors. He was also a Fellow in Neurotology and Skull base surgery at the Manchester Royal Infirmary.

As well as an instructor for the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland Temporal bone Course, Mersey Ear Surgery Course, Royal College of Surgeons of England Core ENT Skills Course, Professor Saeed has published and presented information on skullbase, cochlear implantation, facial nerve rehabilitation, Meniere's disease, neurotology and otosclerosis making a contribution to the ENT profession.