1. AHRF Elects New Board Member to Also Serve on The Research Committee

    May 1, 2007 by tim

    AHRF Elects New Board Member to Also Serve on The Research Committee

    At the AHRF’s 2007 Annual Board Meeting, held on May 16, the Board of Directors elected David A. Klodd, Ph.D. to serve on the Board and also on the Research Committee.

    Dr. Klodd is a practicing audiologist with 29 years of experience. He sees a wide range of patients from neonate through geriatric. His areas of expertise involves audiological evaluation and management in patients with facial nerve disorders, vestibular/balance disorders, and other otoneulogic hearing disorders such as acoustic neuroma and NF2. He sees patients for hearing aid evaluation and fitting as well as auditory implants. Audiology implant intrest is in the areas of cochlear implants, BAHA implants and most recently auditory brainstem implants (ABI).

    In the Au.D. program he teaches classes in amplification, instrumentation, vestibular evaluation/rehabilitation and professional issues. Dr. Klodd has served on the Audiology Advisory Board for the Chicago Hearing Society and curretly serves on the advisory board for the Department of Biomedical and Chemical Engineering in the College of Engineering and Computer Science of Syracuse University. He has served on numerous departmental and medical school committees including being the immediate past Chairman of the Committee on Admissions.

    Dr. Klodd recent ares of invesitigation have been mentored with Rush Au.D. and Rush medical students. Topics of some of some of these projects have involved: (1) The use of Interpeters, (2) Nuerofibromatosis type 2: Audiologic and rehabilitative trends, (3) An Alternative Hearing Device: The Bone Anchored Hearing Aid, (4) Audiological Manifestations of Arnold Chiari Malformation, and (5) Microorganisms and Hearing Aids: Considerations for Infection Control.

  2. AHRF Awards Wiley H. Harrison Grant to Adam Markaryan, Ph.D. of the University of Chicago

    by tim

    AHRF Awards Wiley H. Harrison Grant to Adam Markaryan, Ph.D. of the University of Chicago

    May 16, 2007   The American Hearing Research Foundation will give a Wiley H. Harrison, M.D. Grant to Adam Markaryan, Ph.D., of the University of Chicago to study the effect of mitochondrial deletions in the cochlea on hearing loss.

    Dr. Markaryan is an assistant professor in the otolaryngology/head & neck surgery department.

    He will use the grant, which gives a total of $25,000 over the course of one year, to study the degeneration of the cochlea with age, paying extra attention to the role that genetic mutations in the cell’s mitochondria play. He will study genetic deletions (mutations) in human cochlear tissues using DNA analysis.

    The study will utilize cochlear tissues dissected from celloidin embedded temporal bones from more than 30 individuals with presbycusis and with normal hearing selected on strict audiometric criteria. These temporal bones have also been evaluated by quantitative morphometric methods.  A relationship between the amount and type of DNA deletions in the mitochondria and the severity of hearing loss will be investigated. This study may help to establish a threshold level for cochlear deletions in presbycusis (age related hearing loss) and identify the morphologic abnormalities associated with specific mitochondrial DNA deletions.

    Dr. Markaryan received his bachelor’s degree from St. Petersburg Chemical/Pharmaceutical Institute in 1976, and earned his Ph.D. from Moscow State University in 1982 in biochemistry.
    The Wiley H. Harrison, M.D. Grant is named after Wiley H. Harrison, M.D., who was the American Hearing Research Foundation’s President from 1998 to 2000, and Chairman of the Research Committee from 1978 to 2000.
    The American Hearing Research Foundation gives a grant in honor of Dr. Harrison to support research in otology. Grant proposals are reviewed by CORE, with final say in the project selected remaining with the AHRF.