UTD professor wins $1.5M research grant

From: Dallas Business Journal - Dallas,TX,USA - Mar 30, 2005

The National Institutes of Health has awarded a five-year, $1.5 million grant to a University of Texas at Dallas electrical engineering professor to improve a hearing aid device, the university said Wednesday.

The end result of the project will be to enable users of cochlear implants to hear better in noisy situations and listen to music. A cochlear implant is a small electronic devices that is surgically implanted in the inner ear to help people with certain types of deafness hear.

"In the near future, we envision patients being fitted with at least three distinct programs -- one they can use in relatively quiet environments, one for noisy environments and another for listening to music," said Dr. Philip C Loizou, a professor at UTD's Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science.

Loizou's research will include cochlear implant patients from the Otolaryngology Department at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and will utilize UT Southwestern physicians and audiologists from the Callier Center for Communication Disorders at UTD.

UTD, in Richardson, has an enrollment of more than 14,000.

The Bethesda, Md.-based National Institutes of Health is an agency under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Web site: www.utdallas.edu.

© 2005 American City Business Journals Inc.