ACI announces speakers for the Saturday session at CI 2015 Symposium: The Hearing Restoration and Neuroscience Plenary on Saturday, October 17 at 8:40 AM.
Hearing restoration research has moved beyond exploration of how to improve access to speech and sound. Emphasis is now being given to the effect of hearing on childhood literacy, brain plasticity and connectivity, and the ability for a deaf child to develop empathy and understanding of others. We are now more aware of the effect of prelingual deafness on elements of behavior that are uniquely human and often compromised by deafness. At the other end of the age continuum, hearing loss and associated disruptions in social connectivity appear to carry important implications in maintaining cognition in older adults. A range of neuroscience concerns addressing the entire age spectrum—from infants to octogenarians-- are at the cutting edge of scientific exploration on hearing restoration.
A freewheeling, interdisciplinary discussion will engage three distinguished scientists whose seminal work on cochlear implants intersects these broader brain science topics: David Pisoni, Blake Wilson and Fan-Gang Zeng. The Synergy event will be moderated by technology pioneer Vinton Cerf, widely known as one of the “Fathers of the Internet.” Dr. Cerf has received numerous honors from countries around the world, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest civilian award in America. He has a personal interest in this topic; his wife Sigrid was deafened in childhood and has bilateral cochlear implants.
Moderator: Vinton G. Cerf PhD
Vinton Cerf has served as vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google since October 2005. In this role, he contributes to global policy development and continued standardization and spread of the Internet. He is also an active public face for Google in the Internet world. Widely known as one of the "Fathers of the Internet," Cerf is the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocols and the architecture of the Internet. He is active in his field serving on numerous public and private boards relating to Internet development. Cerf holds an appointment as distinguished visiting scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he is working on the design and implementation of an interplanetary Internet.
Cerf is a recipient of numerous awards and commendations in connection with his work on the Internet including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George Bush, the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton, and the Queen Elizabeth Prize in Engineering. Dr. Cerf has appeared on wide-ranging television programs including NextWave with Leonard Nimoy, World Business Review, and The Colbert Report. https://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/08a2dg/vint-cerf-pt--1
Synergy Speakers
David B. Pisoni PhD, Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Chancellor’s Professor of Cognitive Science at Indiana University, is one of the world’s leading researchers in Communication Sciences and Disorders. He has carried out seminal research on human speech perception, spoken word recognition, language processing, and perceptual development in infants and children. Professor Pisoni works closely with researchers at the IU School of Medicine on clinical problems associated with hearing impairment in deaf children who use cochlear implants.
Blake Wilson D.Sc, D.Eng is Co-Director of the Duke Hearing Center and an Adjunct Professor in each of three departments at Duke: Surgery, Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has been involved in the development of the cochlear implant for the past three decades and is the inventor of many of the signal processing strategies used with present-day CIs. One of his papers, in the journal Nature, is the most highly cited publication the field of CIs. He and his colleagues have been recognized with numerous awards, most notably the 2015 Russ Prize for engineering cochlear implants that allow the deaf to hear and the 2013 Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award (often referred to as the “American Nobel”) for development of the modern cochlear implant.
Fan-Gang Zeng PhD is Director of the Center for Hearing Research and Professor of Anatomy and Neurobiology, Biomedical Engineering, Cognitive Sciences and Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery at the University of California Irvine. Dr. Zeng is a leading researcher in hearing science and technology with over 200 publications. He led development of the Nurotron 26-electrode cochlear implant (currently available in China) and SoundCure tinnitus suppressor. He has consulted for NIH, NSF, DOD, and numerous other public and private agencies. He holds 12 patents and has been awarded numerous prizes for his work including the FIRST Award from NIH.
Register for the symposium at https://www.cvent.com/events/ci-2015-symposium
