FACULTY OTOLOGY
Levent Senaroglu, M.D
He did his medical training and otolaryngology residency in Hacettepe University
Medical Faculty in Ankara. He was a research scholar in House Ear Institute, Los
Angeles California where he did a temporal bone study on middle fossa approach (1997).
For the last 15 years he has been doing otology and neurotology. His main interest is
inner ear malformations. He was involved in the classification and surgery of inner ear
malformations and recently auditory brainstem implantation in prelingual deaf children.
He has recently updated his classification system of inner ear malformations.
He has more than 60 papers in the English literature.
He was the pastpresident of the Otology and Neurotology Society in Turkey. He was the
chairman of theDepartment of Otolaryngology in Hacettepe University between 20062011.
Georg M. Sprinzl
A. Univ. Prof. Dr. med.
Executive Master of Health Service Administration
Universitätsklinik für Hals-, Nasen-, Ohrenheilkunde
Dr Georg M. Sprinzl is Professor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and
leads the Implant team of the Department. He is the Vice Head of the
Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery in Innsbruck. He focuses on
stapes surgery, surgery of active middle ear implants and cochlear implantation
as well as on neurotologic and oncologic skull base surgery. Sprinzl was trained
in skull basesurgery by Prof. Werner in Marburg/Germany and was responsible
for the cochlea implantation program.
He developed in Innsbruck an ongoing educational program for surgeons with
interest in Cochlea implantation and Vibrant Sound Bridge Surgery. Sprinzl is PI
of several clinical trials in the field hearing implants. He pays special interest to
sound localization and speech perception in bilateral users of Vibrant Sound
bridge. His main research interests are on the development of new atraumatic
cochlea implant electrodes for the restoration of residual hearing. Dr. Sprinzl has
a special focus on elderly patients suffering from presbycusis. Severeal quality of
life studies are under way for measuring outcome of surgical interventions in the
hearing implant surgery.
Dr. Sprinzl has published over 60 articles in peer-reviewed
journals. He regularly publishes articles in various areas of otolaryngology and
head and neck oncology. Due to the development of the educational program he
isheavily involved in clinical teaching and is invited for surgeries in many
countries.
A.Univ. Prof. Dr. Georg M. Sprinzl
FACULTY AUDIOLOGY
Rene H .Gifford, Ph.D
René H. Gifford, Ph.D, CCC-A, Assistant professor in the Department of
Hearing and Speech Sciences. Director Cochlear implant program, Vanderbilt Bill
Wilkerson. Department of Otolaryngology.
René H. Gifford, Ph.D, CCC-A, is an assistant professor in the Department of Hearing
and Speech Sciences with a joint appointment in the Department of Otolaryngology. She
is currently the Director of the Cochlear Implant Program at the Vanderbilt Bill
Wilkerson Center as well as the Associate Director of Pediatric Audiology Services. Her
current research interests include combined electric and acoustic stimulation (EAS) with
cochlear implantation, hearing preservation with cochlear implantation, speech
perception for adults and children with cochlear implants, and spatial hearing abilities of
individuals with unilateral and bilateral cochlear implants. Dr. Gifford currently has an
R01 grant from the NIH to study the efficacy of hearing preservation in the implanted ear
for speech perception in complex listening environments as well as for localization. She
is also co-PI on an R01 aimed to examine speech perception in realistic listening
environments for individuals with bimodal hearing and bilateral cochlear implants. The
goal of that project is to develop a clinical tool that would assist clinicians in deciding
when a patient is ready to obtain a second cochlear implant. Dr. Gifford has published
over thirty scholarly articles and book chapters. When not in the lab, clinic, or classroom,
she enjoys spending time with her husband and three sons.
Emily A. Tobey
Dr. Emily Tobey currently is Professor and Nelle C. Johnston Chair at the University of Texas at
Dallas, as well as, an Associate Provost in the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost.
Dr. Tobey has served as a Distinguished Lecturer-in-at Texas Woman's University and as
a visiting research scholar at the Australian Bionic Ear and Hearing Research Institute of
the University of Melbourne, the Pediatric Cochlear Implant Center of Nottingham,
England and the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Montpellier, France.
She was named Distinguished Academy Scientist by the Louisiana Academy of Sciences
and Fellow of the American Speech-Language and Hearing Association and Acoustical
Society of America. In 2001, she was named the University of Texas at Dallas Polykarp
Kusch Lecturer: the highest honor an individual faculty member can receive from the
University. She served as a Distinguished Lecturer for Sigma Xi, the nation’s honorary
research society from 2008-2010 and in 2011, she received the Honors of the American
Speech Language and Hearing Association, the highest honor awarded by the
Association, for career achievements. She has held external funding from the NIH and
other external resources continuously since 1975 and has published over 100
manuscripts.
ADAM T. TIERNEY
CURRENT ADDRESS:
PERMANENT ADDRESS:
ADAMTIERNEY@GMAIL.COM
821 W. EASTWOOD, APT. 3W
13750 SPRINGMILL BLVD.
CHICAGO, IL 60640
(312) 810-4191
CARMEL, IN 46032
(317) 575-8702
EDUCATION/AWARDS
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. 8/2000 – 5/2004. GPA 4.0/4.0.
Majors: Psychology (BS with honors), Cognitive Science (BA), Spanish (BA).
Wells Scholar: Four-year, full-tuition scholarship with stipend given for academic merit.
Phi Beta Kappa, College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s List, National Merit Scholar.
UC San Diego, San Diego, CA. 8/2004 – 6/2010.
Ph.D: Cognitive Science.
Chancellor’s and Dean’s Fellow.
Center for Research in Language Fellow, 2006-2007, 2008-2009.
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. 8/2010-present
Recipient, NIH T31 Translational Research Training Grant
Recipient, Knowles Postdoctoral Fellow Travel Award
RESEARCH
Indiana University Speech Research Laboratory. Research Assistant. Dr. David
Pisoni, Director.
1/2003 – 5/2004. Honors thesis research. Examined cognitive differences between
musicians and non-musicians, focusing on differences in language ability, finding
that musicians benefitted from longer verbal working memory spans. Results
presented at the SMPC meeting, 2005, and published in Empirical Musicology
Review.
UC San Diego Department of Psychology. Research Assistant. Dr. Diana Deutsch,
Professor.
5/2007 – 6/2010. Developed a corpus of examples of a perceptual illusion of
which previously only a single example existed, in which some looped spoken
phrases begin to sound as if they were sung, rather than spoken.
UC San Diego Department of Cognitive Science. Graduate Student. Dr. Marty Sereno,
Advisor.
8/2005 – 5/2007. Mapped vowel formant representations in auditory cortex using
fMRI, finding evidence of topographic representations in left posterior STS.
Results presented at the CNS meeting, 2007.
5/2007 – 6/2010. Using fMRI, examined neural correlates of a perceptual illusion
in which some looped spoken phrases begin to sound as if they were sung, rather
than spoken. Illusion stimuli, compared to matched control stimuli, led to greater
activation in pitch-sensitive areas within auditory cortex. Work in press at
Cerebral Cortex. Mapped frequency representation of human auditory cortex
using a corpus of filtered emotional vocal non-verbal sounds. Work being
prepared for publication.
The Neurosciences Institute. Research Assistant. Dr. Ani Patel, Senior Fellow.
8/2006 – 6/2010. Analyzed pitch patterns in speech, music, and birdsong. Found
evidence for skip-reversal patterns and final lengthening in all three domains, and
a “melodic arch” contour specific to speech and music. Results presented at the
ASA meeting, 2008, and at the SMPC meeting, 2009. Work published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Northwestern University Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders.
Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Nina Kraus, Professor.
8/2010 – present. Member of management team supervising five-year study of the
effects of musical experience on the cognitive and perceptual development of
high-school students, using neurophysiological and behavioral measure.
Investigated applications of new method of investigating the timing of responses
to sound originating in the auditory brainstem, resulting in two studies, one
published in Hearing Research and another study presented at the conference
Neurosciences and Music IV, now being written up for publication. Investigated
relationships between oscillatory brain activity during a resting state in
adolescents, age, and language skill, a study currently being written up for
publication. Also currently developing and managing a study of the effects of
rhythm on the auditory brainstem response.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
UC San Diego, 2004-2010: Teaching assistant
UC San Diego, Winter 2008: Recipient, Award for Superior Teaching
Northwestern University, Fall 2010: Lecturer
Tony Spahr , PhD
Faculty Research Associate, Speech and Hearing Science, College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences
Ph.D., Arizona State University