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Figure 1. Several of the 80+ scientists with hearing loss dis- cussing their participation at the 2017 Association for Research in Otolaryngology meeting. Standing front to back: Patrick Raphael, Daniel Tward*, Brenda Farrell*^, Robert Raphael^, and Tilak Ratnanather^. Seated, clockwise from left: Erica Hegland, Kelsey Anbuhl, Patricia Stahn, Valluri “Bob” Rao, Oluwaseun Ogunbina, Adam Schwalje, Steven Losorelli, Ste- phen McInturff, Peter Steyger^ (standing), Lina Reiss^, and Amanda Lauer*^. *, Person is not deaf or hard of hearing; ^, person is in the STEMM for Students with Hearing Loss to En- gage in Auditory Research (STEMM-HEAR) faculty. Photo by Chin-Fu Liu*.
Cambridge, MA, my main accommodation was note taking, with occasional one-to-one discussions with professors or graduate students. After college, I have been communicating in both LSL and American Sign Language (ASL), the latter of which enabled me to use ASL interpreters at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. These accommodations en- abled me to complete my PhD thesis under the supervision of James Saunders, focusing on hearing restoration in birds following acoustic trauma.
One of the things I have learned from attending conferences and meetings is that there are often accommodations for pre- planned events. However, a major factor for effective scientific collaboration is impromptu conversations with colleagues at conferences. It is impossible to predict when or where these conversations will occur, much less request ASL interpreters. Recent technological advances now include speech-to-text apps for smartphones that could be used for these impromptu scientific discussions, although initial experience shows that these apps may incorrectly translate technical terms.
I have observed my D/HH peers with cochlear implants suc- ceeding because they are better able to participate in discus-
sions, gaining a bigger picture of their scientific interests. This is different from family discussions because my imme- diate family would always get me involved. Until my mar- riage to a deaf woman, I was the only deaf member of my immediate family. Also, my nephew Robby has to fight all the time for his parents’ attention when his own family is having a discussion even though he has bilateral cochlear implants. He simply does not like to be left out. Nonetheless, I hesitate on having a cochlear implant myself because I am at peace with my disability. Perseverance and tenacity are key to a successful academic career. My primary interest in biology combined with my hearing loss to cement a lifelong interest in hearing research. No matter what happens in the future, it is important that hearing research gains more than one perspective, especially that provided by diverse professionals with their own hearing loss.
J. Tilak Ratnanather
Born in Sri Lanka with profound bilateral hearing loss, I ben- efited from early diagnosis and intervention (both of which were unheard of in the 1960s but are now common practice worldwide) that led my parents to return to England. At two outstanding schools for the deaf (Woodford School, now closed, and Mary Hare School, Newbury, Berkshire, UK), I developed the skills in LSL that enabled me to matriculate in mathematics at University College London, UK. More recently, I have benefited from bimodal auditory inputs via a cochlear implant (CI) and a digital hearing aid in the contralateral ear.
In the late 1980s, I was completing my DPhil in mathemat- ics at the University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. One afternoon, when nothing was going right, I stumbled on a mathemati- cal biology seminar on the topic of cochlear fluid mechanics. An hour later, I knew what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I first did postdoctoral work in London, which gave me an opportunity to visit Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, in 1990. This enabled me to attend the Centennial Convention of the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (AG Bell) in Washington, DC. There I heard William Brownell from Johns Hopkins University (JHU), Baltimore, MD, discuss the discovery of cochlear outer hair cell electro- motility (see article by Brownell [2017] in Acoustics Today). A brief conversation resulted in my moving to JHU the fol- lowing year to work as a postdoctoral fellow with Brownell.
It was at this convention that I came across a statement in the Strategic Plan of the newly established NIDCD (1989, p. 247).
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