Project Title: Neuroplasticity and early cochlear implant use
Position: Postdoctoral Fellow
Institution: NYU Langone School of Medicine
Funding NIH Institution/Center: National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication
Grant ID: K99DC021727
Ariel’s studies are performed at the intersection between neuroscience, neuroplasticity, and neuroprosthetics. His studies focus on cochlear implants, which are auditory neuroprosthetic devices that restore hearing to folks with severe to profound hearing loss. Cochlear Implants restore significant levels of open-set speech perception, but these outcomes do not happen instantaneously and require weeks to months of adaptation. Ariel’s K99/R00 MOSAIC application proposed a complimentary set of human and rodent studies of cochlear implant use, focusing on the days and weeks immediately following initial activation to determine which perceptual and neurophysiological variables contribute to improvement in speech perception.
Over the past 16 years, Ariel has been trained in biomedical engineering, medical device engineering, and auditory neuroscience. His training has taken him from the Midwest (St. Louis University) to the West Coast (University of Southern California) and ending up on the East Coast (Harvard University), and his breadth of training provides him the expertise and creativity for bridging basic science and engineering disciplines. Ariel is currently a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone Medical Center, jointly between the labs of Robert Froemke and Mario Svirsky.
Ariel is also Deaf/hard of hearing and is passionate and committed to disability inclusion, and more broadly to inclusion, equity, and diversity. Further, Ariel believes these efforts are not necessarily a means to an end but rather continuing efforts help maximize talent in the scientific workforce & promote a healthy scientific community.