Colette McKay addresses 169th Meeting of Acoustical Society of America

Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, USA

veski innovation fellow Professor Colette McKay was the only person from Melbourne to be invited to present at the special 169th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America (#ASA169) in the USA in May 2015.

Professor McKay presented alongside leading individuals in her field who have received prestigious awards including the Lasker-DeBakey Prize, the Russ Prize or both for their work. The 169th Meeting celebrated the development of the modern cochlear implant and some of the many individuals who made this technology possible, including Blake Wilson, Australia's own Graeme Clark, Ingeborg Hochmair-Desoyer, Erwin Hochmair and Michael Merzenich.

The Acoustical Society of America, a 7,500 member society of men and women whose work is largely responsible for the world-wide preeminence in the field of acoustics. Professor McKay is currently undertaking a project titled "Objective programming of cochlear implants and other devices for electrical stimulation" at Melbourne's Bionics Institute with the support of a veski innovation fellowship.

Colette's presentation focused on "Inserting the speech signal above the cochlea: How can this work?” and addressed a subgroup of people who cannot benefit from cochlear implants (CIs) due to malformation of the cochlea or damage to the cochlear nerve. 

Her presentation was part of the session: Psychological and Physiological Acoustics, Biomedical Acoustics, Speech Communication, and Signal Processing in Acoustics: Celebration of the Modern Cochlear Implant and the First Substantial Restoration of a Human Sense Using a Medical Intervention I. The session was chaired by Michael Dorman from Arizona State University and Blake S. Wilson from Duke University.

The 169th Meeting was held from Monday 18 to Friday 22 May 2015 at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown Hotel, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, USA.