Our Sincere Thanks to Peter Steyger, Ph.D.
By Anil K. Lalwani, M.D.
One of the (many) benefits of being a primary funder of ear researchers—particularly at the early stages of their careers—is that Hearing Health Foundation has the opportunity to build lasting relationships with leading experts in our field. It is not unusual for some to move over the course of time from grantee to reviewer to scientific adviser, as I can personally attest!
Peter Steyger, Ph.D., of Creighton University, has been a longtime colleague and partner in our work at HHF. Many of HHF’s supporters may recall that he has been featured numerous times on our blog and in Hearing Health magazine, most recently in a profile in the Winter 2020 issue of the magazine. Having lost his own hearing at just over 1 year of age due to necessary but ototoxic antibiotics, Peter has a deeply personal connection to the research to which he has dedicated his career.
Peter Steyger, Ph.D. (right), with his Creighton University colleague Litao Tao, Ph.D. (who also works with Hearing Health Foundation as part of our Hearing Restoration Project), at the Association for Research in Otolaryngology MidWinter Conference in February 2023.
Now a professor of biomedical sciences and the director of the Dr. Richard J. Bellucci Translational Hearing Center at Creighton, Peter received one of his earliest awards as a research scientist from HHF, an Emerging Research Grant in 1995–1996. Shortly thereafter he was named an assistant professor at Oregon Health & Sciences University, where he set up his own lab. His research, while ranging widely, has maintained a focus on ototoxicity and the molecular mechanisms by which intravascular ototoxic drugs cross the blood-labyrinth barrier into the inner ear, resulting in hearing loss and deafness.
Peter joined HHF’s Council of Scientific Trustees (CST), the governing body of our Emerging Research Grants (ERG) program, in the mid-2000s. Appreciating the importance of this funding scheme to researchers’ career paths, he also served as a reviewer of ERG applications across numerous application cycles. HHF is dependent on and incredibly grateful to the clinicians and researchers like Peter who volunteer their time and expertise to reviewing grant applications, overseeing the ERG program, and informing our mission as the largest private, nonprofit funder of hearing and balance research in the U.S.
There are many demands on university researchers, with teaching, running one’s own lab, and administrative responsibilities to one’s department and school leaving precious limited time for other parts of one’s life. This spring, Peter decided to step back from the CST to focus on some of his many other endeavors. HHF has benefited from nearly two decades of his service and, while sad to see him go, we wish him all the best.
Thanks to the robust ERG program that Peter and others have guided and grown over the years, the hearing and balance field has a strong community of researchers eager to continue making sure that HHF is able to identify and support innovative and significant new research to address the needs of the field and people who live with hearing and balance disorders.
On behalf of HHF and its many supporters and donors, I want to thank Peter again for his dedication and contributions: to HHF, to many a new researcher’s career, and to our understanding of ototoxicity and hearing loss.
Anil K. Lalwani, M.D., is a member of HHF's Board of Directors and the head of HHF's Council of Scientific Trustees, which oversees the ERG program. He is a professor and the vice chair for research in the division of otology, neurology, and skull base surgery at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, and a codirector at the Columbia Cochlear Implant Program.
To read more about Peter Steyger, Ph.D., see his first magazine story in the Spring 2012 issue and most recently in the Winter 2020 issue.