By Yishane Lee

Each year Hearing Health Foundation’s (HHF) Emerging Research Grants (ERG) program funds innovative hearing and balance projects from promising early-career scientists. A program created by Collette Ramsey Baker, in 1958 when HHF was founded, ERG continues to be a cornerstone of our mission. We eagerly look forward to applications from potential grantees, due this year on Feb. 10, 2020, and publicizing their projects and careers. 

We do this by highlighting the published papers that result from their grants, as well as their work following the grant. After more than 60 years of funding scientists, we are thrilled that many of today’s leading hearing and balance scientists got their start with ERG grants, and that, at last count, for every $1 ERG dollar, our grantees have gone on to earn $91 in National Institutes of Health funding, the pinnacle of federal research funding. 

We also share the researchers’ back story in a column called Meet the Researcher, which offers insights into how these inspiring scientists became interested in their projects specifically and careers generally. 

Among our 14 grantees in the class of 2019, two were first-time college students in their families. Kristi Hendrickson, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, recognizes that “a barrier to success for first-generation college students is having access to family who have successfully navigated college before them,” so she makes a point of recruiting and mentoring other first-generation college students. Kristy J. Lawton, Ph.D., was an undeclared major for two years, before leveraging her love of the countryside and a childhood catching snakes and insects, which she carries through to her research examining zebrafish, a common animal model for hearing loss, and fostering kittens. “Watching how the kittens develop and interact with the world reminds me of the complexities of our sensory and motor systems,” she says.

Growing up with a hearing loss himself eventually propelled Victor Wong, Ph.D., toward a research career, although he says he also considered being an artist, entomologist, astronaut, fashion designer, or teacher. A competitive cyclist, Wong is also working with his institution to promote science and medical education and training accessible to all. As a child Anat Lubetzky, Ph.D., dreamed of singing and dancing on Broadway, but sports injuries led her to physical therapy, sparking an interest in anatomy and science. She is using virtual reality headsets to track how what we hear affects balance. 

David Martinelli, Ph.D., notes that he is still working with rodents, all the way from a school science fair project using his pet hamsters through to his genetic research on the detection of auditory pain. Gail M. Seigel, Ph.D., thought of becoming a veterinarian but realized she liked even smaller creatures (cells). She published a memoir, “Academania: My Life in the Trenches of Biomedical Research.” Pierre Apostolides, Ph.D., says that “funnily enough, my childhood hobby of tinkering with audio recording equipment has come in handy” for his current work running auditory experiments that require significant background knowledge of acoustics and signal processing.

We also have a very peripatetic group, with Dunia Abdul-Aziz, M.D., hailing from Iraq, and former military brat Micheal Dent, Ph.D., living in Germany, Italy, Texas, Taiwan, Florida, Japan, England, and Maryland—“all before I hit high school,” she says. In addition to English, Vijayalakshmi Easwar, Ph.D., speaks the Indian languages Tamil, Hindi, and Kannada. Vijaya Prakash Krishnan Muthaiah, Ph.D., earned his doctorate in molecular biology–anatomy in India, and Hao Luo, M.D., Ph.D., received his graduate degrees in China before landing at the Tinnitus and Auditory Neuroscience Research Lab at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Please read more about all of our ERG scientists at Meet the Researcher.