Remembering Dr. Lisa Chutjian
The Johns Hopkins Neuroscience Scholars Program would like to extend our warmest sympathies to the family and colleagues of the late Lisa Chutjian, former chief development officer at the Alexander Bell Graham Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (AG Bell). In the words of program co-Director, Dr. Tilak Ratnanather:
Lisa was exceptionally both professional and cheerful in her work with AGBell. I will miss her enthusiasm and support for the College Financial Aid Committee and STEMM-HEAR which after two failed attempts with NSF will finally get NIH funding for five years this fall (two reviewers gave a mixture of 1s and 2s, making it fundable). She will be missed and the scholarship is a worthy recognition of her significant contributions to AGBell as well as her respect for college education.
Please honor her wishes with a donation to the scholarship in her name at AG Bell, furthering Lisa’s life’s work towards providing educational opportunities for students who are deaf/hard of hearing.
Congratulations Dr. Tilak Ratnanather!
Program Co-Director, Dr. Tilak Ratnanather, DPhil has been awarded a new R25 training grant to continue his important work providing mentored biomedical training opportunities in auditory research for Deaf/Hard of Hearing (D/HH) undergraduate students. In collaboration with the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and the Hearing Loss Association of America, the “STEMM Opportunities for College Students with Hearing Loss to Engage in Auditory Research (STEMM-HEAR)” program is funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
This training program will choose undergraduate students to undergo a research experience in a hearing sciences laboratory with faculty mentors who also have hearing loss. While working and communicating with mentors as well as hearing peers, they will develop the capacity to become leaders in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine.
Congratulations Treasure Nwokeleme!
Update from Ms. Treasure Nwokeleme, JHIBS Alumnus and Cohort 1 Scholar:
To Dr. Brown and the JHNSP Family,
I hope you and everyone at the lab are doing well! I wanted to update you on my medical school application cycle. I have had a great cycle, and I am so grateful for it all! I had 17 schools invite me to interview, and I am overjoyed to have ten medical school acceptances at the Loyola Stritch SOM, Rochester SOM, Case Western Reserve SOM, University of Michigan Medical School, Tulane SOM, Zucker SOM, University of Pittsburgh Medical School, Albert Einstein COM, Iowa Carver College of Medicine, and Virginia Commonwealth COM! I have also been fortunate to receive some scholarships, including a full-tuition scholarship at Zucker SOM.
I want to thank you so much for always supporting me, encouraging me to step outside my comfort zone, and being a mentor to me ever since participating in JHIBS.
Thank you so much for all the advice and support!
Best,
Treasure
Treasure has begun her medical training at the University of Michigan School of Medicine. Best of luck to her, from all of us!
Congratulations Mary Caroline Yuk (Cohort 2), named 2023 Luce Scholar Award Winner!
Established in 1974, the Luce Scholars Program offers early-career leaders year-long immersive, professional experiences in Asia, providing stipends, language training, and individualized professional placements. Mary Caroline Yuk recently graduated from The University of Alabama as the Catherine J. Randall awardee, which recognizes the single top scholar based on academic record and scholarly endeavor. She has established interests in hearing healthcare disparities and gerontology, as well as neurobiology and biochemistry. Her work with Dr. Marcia Hay-McCutcheon on a rural mobile audiology clinic, Hear Here Alabama, inspired the first children’s hearing education program in Alabama and secured grants for further accessibility efforts, including a $2.1 million grant to fund community health workers and a hearing aid delivery program.
At University of Alabama, Caroline conducted research with Dr. Rebecca Allen into the effectiveness of art therapy on Alzheimer’s Disease and analyzed a hearing screen tool to assess mild cognitive impairment in a geriatric population, and rural and urban healthcare differences. She also conducted biochemistry research into antibiotic resistance in Dr. Jack Dunkle’s Lab. Afterwards, Caroline conducted neuroscience research at University of Michigan’s Kresge Hearing Research Institute in Dr. Gabriel Corfas‘ lab, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Dr. Yuri Agrawal’s lab, and Harvard Medical School in Dr. Lisa Goodrich’s Lab. As the first deaf Marshall Scholar and University of Alabama’s first in over 40 years, Caroline has received the MSc in Neuroscience from University of Oxford, where she worked on research relating functional connectivity and heart rate variability with Dr. Miriam Klein-Flugge, as well as corticofugal projections’ role in spatial hearing with Dr. Victoria Bajo, Dr. Fernando Nodal, and Dr. Andy King.
She is currently working with Dr. Sarah Hogan to analyze and create a profile of deaf children’s sensory integration difficulties at Auditory Verbal UK, a charity that provides subsidized language training for deaf babies from low-income families. She is now pursuing a second MSc in Medical Anthropology at University of Oxford and plans to focus on deaf populations’ access and perspective on medicine.
Congratulations to Zandy Wong, (Cohort 3) 2022-23 Heumann-Armstrong Award Winner!
The Heumann-Armstrong award is given to students who have experienced ableism in education, and shown a passion for fighting ableism in education. It is funded by the American Association of People with Disabilities and The Coelho Center for Disability Law, Policy, and Innovation. Link to the full article.
Zandy’s research explores the intersection of public health and neuroscience to inform the creation of accessible digital public health systems for patients with disabilities. Her work to advance digital accessibility has helped create accessible educational content for over 200,000 youth in 119 countries. At Hopkins, she collaborates with Hopkins student offices and clubs to host accessibility workshops, check online curricula for accessibility, and deliver accessible research symposiums.
For Zandy’s passionate efforts in advocacy research for people living with disabilities, on March 8, 2023, she was recognized on International Women’s Day by Johns Hopkins as 1 of 10 other highly successful groundbreakers across the university.
Congratulations to our JHNSP Co-Director!
Dr. Tilak Ratnanather DPhil Elected to the 2022 Class of the AIMBE College of Fellows
February 18, 2022 – WASHINGTON, D.C. The American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) has announced the election of Tilak Ratnanather, Associate Research Professor, Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University to its College of Fellows. Dr. Ratnanather was nominated, reviewed, and elected by peers and members of the AIMBE College of Fellows for leadership and outstanding contribution in making biomedical engineering and STEMM accessible to people with hearing loss worldwide.