Members

	P. Ashley Wackym, MD	Professor and Chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and Chancellor’s Scholar of the Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences, New Brunswick, New Jersey.
	Robin L. Davis, PhD	Vice Dean for Research and Graduate Education and Professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Rutgers New Brunswick is a nationally recognized scholar of auditory neuroscience.
	David Vicario, PhD	Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Psychology at Rutgers New Brunswick. His research uses behavioral, physiological, and anatomical techniques to study-1) auditory discrimination and auditory memories for species-typical vocal sounds; 2) initiation and patterning of learned vocalizations in vocal production areas; and 3) feedback processes that enable relevant auditory information to modify vocal output during vocal learning.
	Kasia Bieszczad, PhD	Associate Professor of Psychology at Rutgers New Brunswick. Her lab aims to understand the transformation of transient sensory experience into long-lasting memory of experience in an auditory model of associative learning. Her lab studies learning-induced plasticity in the auditory cortex and identifies circuit and molecular mechanisms that regulate the sound-specificity of auditory system plasticity that remodels cortical and subcortical representations of sound.

	Kelvin Kwan, PhD	Associate Professor in the Department of Cell Biology & Neuroscience at Rutgers New Brunswick. The Kwan Laboratory is interested in regenerating spiral ganglion neurons of the vertebrate inner ear. They employ a variety of techniques including super-resolution imaging and massively parallelized sequencing methods. They are currently investigating the molecular role of chromodomain helicase DNA binding proteins during differentiation of spiral ganglion neurons.
	Todd Mowery, PhD	Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and core faculty in the Rutgers Brain Health Institute. His research program investigates how early auditory and visual experience influences the development of the cortico- and thalamostriatal circuits that govern perceptual action selection.
	Justin Yao, PhD	Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and core faculty in the Rutgers Brain Health Institute. His research program aims to understand how transformations of sensory information across higher cortical areas support perceptual decision-making. His lab also studies the neural basis of how hearing loss affects cognitive decline.
	Scott Shapiro, MD	Assistant Professor of of the Otology, Neurotology, and Lateral Skull Base Surgery section in the department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. He specializes in the surgical treatment of hearing loss, vestibular disorders, chronic ear disease, otosclerosis, and skull base tumors in children and adults; performing procedures such as cochlear implants, tympanoplasty, mastoidectomy, stapedectomy, endolymphatic sac surgery, and acoustic neuroma microsurgical resection.
	Tejbeer Kaur, PhD	Assistant Professor in the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and core faculty in the Rutgers Brain Health Institute. In the Kaur Lab, the research broadly aims to understand the complex biology and interactions of immune cells and their effector molecules with the sensory cells of the inner ear and how these interactions influence hearing, hearing loss and sensory cell development, degeneration, repair, survival, and plasticity.
	April Benasich, PhD	Dr. April A. Benasich is the Elizabeth H. Solomon Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience. She is also the Director of the Infancy Studies Laboratory at the Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience, Rutgers University-Newark and Director of the Carter Center for Neurocognitive Research. Her research uses converging paradigms and prospective longitudinal studies to explore the human developing brain, the dynamics of early brain plasticity and the role of attention and sensory recruitment in the construction of early brain networks crucial to normative language and cognitive development.
	John McGann, PhD	Professor, Department of Psychology, Rutgers New Brunswick is interested in how the brain understands sensory stimuli from the world around it, and how it adapts its sensory processing based on prior sensory experience. His lab works primarily in the rodent olfactory (smell) system, where the neural circuits that process odor stimuli are physically and optically accessible and where breakthroughs in molecular biology permit powerful new experimental techniques.
	Ioana Carcea, MD, PhD	Assistant Professor, NJMS- Department of Pharmacology, Physiology & Neuroscience. Ioana is interested in how mammals process social information, and the neuronal mechanisms by which this information impacts brain states, neuronal plasticity and behavior.
	Mimi Phan, PhD	Associate Research Professor, Department of Psychology, Rutgers New Brunswick. She is interested in systems and behavioral neuroscience with an emphasis on auditory plasticity/stability and perceptual functions in humans, non-human primates, rodents, and songbirds across the lifespan and pathologies. Effects of stress and epigenetic influences on sensory and sensorimotor learning and memory. She is also interested in modelling of infant vocal learning.

 

Other Rutgers faculty with interests in auditory neuroscience-

• Department of Neurological Surgery at Rutgers RBHS:
  Detlev Boison, PhD
  Hai Sun MD, PhD
  Stephen Johnson, MD
  Margaret Pain, MD
  Yasunori Nagahama, MD
  Sudipta Roychodhury, MD PhD
• Department of Audiology and Speech at Rutgers RBHS:
  Kara Wheeler, AuD CCC-A
  Erica Miele, AuD CCC-A
  Victoria Andre, AuD CCC-A
  Anita Bhandarker, AuD CCC-A
• Department of Linguistics RU-NB-SAS:
  Kristen Syrett, PhD
  Michelle Erskine, MS CCC-SLP
  Marina Gulak, MS CCC-SLP
  Ann Marie Olson, ScD CCC-A FAAA

Undergraduate Certificate in Speech & Hearing Sciences (Department of Linguistics at RU-NB- SAS)