The NFD is proud to be a sponsor for the largest ever meeting on Tinnitus in New Zealand.
The Asia & Pacific Tinnitus Symposium, being held in Auckland from 11-12 September 2009, is possibly the most significant event in New Zealand tinnitus history, and is a chance for clinicians and interested bodies to hear and discuss tinnitus from some of the world’s experts. It also represents an attempt to create an increase of interest in tinnitus around the Pacific Rim, away from the usual venues and focus of North America and Europe. New Zealand has been involved in Tinnitus research since the mid 1970s, with the pioneering work of Ron Goodey, Pamela Melding and Peter Thorne. This has continued with a new generation of tinnitus researchers.
The NFD has assisted in bringing the keynote speaker, Dr William (Billy) Martin, to New Zealand for the Symposium and other speaking engagements. Dr Martin is a professor of Otolaryngology/Head & Neck Surgery and Professor of Public Health and Preventative Medicine at the Oregon Health & Science University, USA.
He is a senior researcher in the Oregon Hearing Research Center, where he serves as Director of the OHSU Tinnitus Clinic and research programme, intraoperative neurophysiology and the nationally recognised Dangerous Decibels programme, a creative and aggressive public health campaign to halt the epidemic of noise induced hearing loss in children of all ages.
Dr Martin has twice been awarded the Dr Frank Cole lectureship in Otology at the Technion in Haifa, Israel, and received the OHSU Distinguished Science Educator Award.
He is active in eight professional societies, a Fellow of the American Academy of Audiology, the American Society for Neurophysiological Monitoring and served as a scientific advisor to the American Tinnitus Asociation for 13 years.
He is currently Principal Investigator or co-PI on five grant funded projects and has produced over 400 scientific papers, articles and presentations in the fields of neuroscience, hearing, computational physics and public health.
His bachelors degree comes from the University of California, Irvine, with honours in research. He then worked his way up the coast through an intercampus doctoral programme at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he studied audiology, linguistics and electrical engineering, then medicine, auditory neuroscience and computational physics. His postdoctoral fellowship was in neurophysiology in the Behavioural Biology Department at the Technion.
An organiser of the symposium, Dr Grant Searchfield, Head of Audiology at the University of Auckland, said the ability to host such a significant event is a recognition of the efforts of the Deafness Research Foundation, NFD and other sponsors supporting tinnitus researchers, together with the invaluable input of research groups, particularly at Otago University and The University of Auckland.
“The University of Auckland is currently undertaking trials of many new tinnitus treatments. We are incredibly excited about these developments and the promise they offer to the 5% plus of the New Zealand population that suffer to some extent from tinnitus."
For further details about the Tinnitus Symposium or to register:
http://www.fmhs.auckland.ac.nz/soph/depts/audiology/tinnitus_discovery.aspx
If you or someone you know suffers from tinnitus and would be interested in participating in the University of Auckland’s research please contact Dr Grant Searchfield at g.searchfield@auckland.ac.nz
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