World of Wonder in Science Seminar Series
Dr. Peter C. Hauser
Dr. Peter C. Hauser is a professor and neuropsychologist who directs the NTID Center on Cognition & Language. He is the Director of the Rochester Bridges to the Doctorate program that prepares deaf and hard of hearing RIT graduate students for doctoral training in biomedical and behavioral science disciplines. In this presentation, Dr. Hauser will be describing his journey through high school, undergraduate studies, doctoral studies, and beyond – up to becoming a full professor. He will describe what the journey was like for him as a Deaf individual. He will also describe how he emerged as a researcher, the challenges he faced, and how his research topics evolved over time.
Dr. Rain Bosworth
Dr. Rain Bosworth is an Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. She teaches undergraduate courses in developmental psychology, psycholinguistics, and biological psychology. Dr. Bosworth has been highly successful in obtaining research grant funding, with uninterrupted grant funding since 2001. She is currently lead PI on two research grants from NSF and NIH studying visual perception in Deaf and hearing infants, children, and adults. She considers herself a developmental vision scientist, dedicated to studying how early sensory experiences shape visual abilities later in life. She has addressed this theme in children with congenital eye disorders and in healthy, premature infants. She is currently working on a project addressing whether television exposure impacts young infants’ visual perception abilities. Dr. Bosworth will present her experiences as a deaf scientist, the challenges she faced, and how her research interests evolved over time.
Dr. Robert Pollard
Dr. Robert Pollard comes to NTID from University of Rochester’s School of Medicine where he is a professor of psychiatry and serves as founder and director of the Department of Psychiatry’s Deaf Wellness Center. His work has been recognized with many national and international awards and honors, and he has been a principal investigator on more than 50 federal, foundation, regional and local grants, totaling more than $6 million. He has published more than 90 articles and book chapters and has produced 15 films in American Sign Language.
Pollard’s research interests include psychopathology, psychological testing, sign language interpreting, forensic evaluation, intimate partner violence, and public health issues affecting the deaf population. He is active in several national organizations, including the American Psychological Association where he founded a special interest section on deafness.
Dr. Derek C. Braun
Derek C. Braun, Ph.D. is a professor at Gallaudet in the Department of Science, Technology, & Mathematics. He is director of the Biology Program and director of the Molecular Genetics Laboratory. As a graduate student at the University of Maryland, Dr. Braun was a NIH National Service Research Award (NRSA) fellow. His graduate research was on the genetics of lipooligosaccharide antigenic variation in the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae, where he uncovered a novel mechanism for the regulation of gene expression in Neisseria. Dr. Braun then worked at the National Cancer Institute, NIH where he applied genetics tools to study signal transduction pathways important in cancer and pain. Dr. Braun was awarded a provisional patent for developing a fluorescent chimeric protein for high-throughput screening of potential anticancer drugs. His current research projects are in the population genetics of connexin deafness, cancer pharmacology, and improving outcomes for deaf students pursuing STEM careers.
Dr. Wyatte C. Hall
Wyatte C. Hall, Ph.D.is a postdoctoral fellow in the Clinical & Translational Science Institute at the University of Rochester Medical Center. Within the National Center for Deaf Health Research and the Public Health Sciences department, he is researching the relationship between early language experiences and lifespan health outcomes in deaf people with a focus on language deprivation and deaf health disparities. He received his undergraduate psychology degree from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2008 and his doctorate in clinical psychology from Gallaudet University in 2014. Wyatte believes in research advocacy and translating empirical evidence into practice to ensure the healthy development of deaf children.
Dr. Regina Nuzzo
Regina Nuzzo was born with a hearing loss and got her first pair of hearing aids at age 6. She now has a cochlear implant, works as a journalist, and teaches statistics at Gallaudet University. Along the way, she got a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of South Florida and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Stanford University, did postdoctoral work in the Psychology Department at McGill University in Quebec, and studied science journalism at University of California at Santa Cruz. Her feature article for the journal Nature about statistical problems in scientific research won the American Statistical Association 2014 Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award and has been tweeted more than 11,000 times.