By Yishane Lee
Starting with the 2020–2021 Emerging Research Grants (ERG) cycle, Hearing Health Foundation has boosted the annual funding per project to $50,000 annually, with grants renewable for a second year.
These seven early career scientists were chosen through a rigorous review by HHF’s Scientific Review Committee and Council of Scientific Trustees, comprising senior expert scientists and physicians from across the U.S. The researchers are investigating a range of hearing and balance areas and also, as demonstrated in our Meet the Researcher column, have diverse interests in their free time, which more often than not informs their work.
Clockwise from top left: Calvin Wu, Ph.D., Pei-Ciao Tang, Ph.D., Mishaela DiNino, Ph.D., and Ross Williamson, Ph.D.
James Dewey, Ph.D., grew up in academia and has long made the effort to record interesting acoustic events, such as the sound of running down a sand dune or a blizzard outside his window. Originally interested in the arts, he now sees that being a researcher is not dissimilar, with lots of uncertainty and creativity involved. Mishaela DiNino, Ph.D., who is generously funded by the Meringoff Family Foundation, shares that she is a fan of heavy metal concerts—with earplugs, of course. During community outreach events, she stresses the importance of hearing protection among young people and adults.
Generously funded by the General Grand Chapter Royal Arch Masons International, Z. Ellen Peng, Ph.D., learned how to do logarithmic decibel addition in second grade, even before she learned multiplication, thanks to her acoustician father, while her pediatrician mother showed her how less fortunate children could be helped. During her doctoral research on sea anemone hair cells, avid scuba diver Pei-Ciao Tang, Ph.D., was entranced by marine molecular biology before segueing into mammalian hair cell systems. Nowadays she views her adventures in pandemic baking as experiments to troubleshoot like she would in the lab.
Bryan Ward, M.D., says running helps him come up with research ideas and that his other hobby, painting, can make a nice complement to papers when he can illustrate some findings. Having also studied philosophy at Oxford, he says it continues to inform his thinking and writing. Growing up listening to Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd led Ross Williamson, Ph.D., still a huge Phish fan, to become interested in the mechanisms behind guitar effects pedals and a love for the mathematics in signal processing. Duathlete Calvin Wu, Ph.D., who is generously funded by the Les Paul Foundation, likes the problem solving inherent in science and says that even if he didn’t realize it at the time, his late grandfather’s hearing loss now resonates in his research, underscoring the communication difficulties that people with hearing conditions experience.
HHF looks forward to learning about the advances these promising researchers will make with their funded ERG projects, and beyond.
