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Topics:  Auditory Neuroscience, Hearing Impairment, Cocktail Party Effect, Everyday Communication, Role of AI in Science, Spatial Hearing

Industries: Education/Learning

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (ScB, Brown University; MS and PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is the Glen de Vries Dean of Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon University. She joined Carnegie Mellon University in 2018 as the founding director of the Neuroscience Institute and holds courtesy appointments in Psychology, Biomedical Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. An author of more than 200 scientific articles, her research combines behavioral, neuroimaging, and computational methods to understand how the brain processes sound. She is a Fellow of both the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She is a recipient of ASA’s Helmholtz-Rayleigh Interdisciplinary Silver Medal, the Brown Engineering Alumni Medal, and research fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, and the Vannevar Bush Fellows program. Her mentorship has been recognized by the ASA and the Society for Neuroscience.

Media Experience

New dean joins Carnegie Mellon science college  — Trib Live
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham came to Carnegie Mellon in 2018 as founding director of the Neuroscience Institute. A faculty researcher and an engineer by training, she is a professor of auditory neuroscience. “Interdisciplinary approaches erase boundaries that have traditionally separated fields of study, thereby accelerating scientific discovery,” she said. “Such collaboration is part of CMU’s DNA, a fact that attracts some of the most creative and broad-thinking scientists to the Mellon College of Science.”

Neuroscientists and Game Designers Play Well Together  — Carnegie Mellon University
"Neuroscience is trending in the direction of using richer, more natural stimuli and less constrained behavior," Shinn-Cunningham said. "To get good data, past research often has been repetitive and dull, dividing tasks into brief 'trials' that constrain what happens. Acquiring information isn't fun or meaningful like it is in real life. One of the things game designers can teach us is how to make tasks fun, which can change how the brain functions."

Pittsburgh’s ‘neighborly playground’ for neuroscience has new leadership  — Pittwire - University of Pittsburgh
“We went through many exercises to try to figure out what people need and want out of the center and were able to generate feedback in a bottom up, grassroots way,” Shinn-Cunningham said. “The neuroscience programs at both universities have grown substantially over the years — but everyone still recognizes how much they gain from being part of the larger, more diverse community.”

Otonomy Reports Positive Top-Line Results from Phase 2a Clinical Trial of OTO-413 in Patients with Hearing Loss  — Benzinga
"The most common complaint of patients seeking treatment for hearing loss is difficulty hearing a conversation in a noisy setting," said Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Ph.D., Director, Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute and Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, Biomedical Engineering, Psychology, and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

Otonomy Reports Positive Top-Line Results from Phase 1/2 Clinical Trial of OTO-413 in Patients with Hearing Loss  — Investors Hub
“Difficulty hearing a conversation with noise in the background is a common complaint by patients presenting for hearing loss treatment and this is only expected to grow as the population ages and noise exposure in our society continues to increase,” said Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Ph.D., Director, Carnegie Mellon Neuroscience Institute and Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, Biomedical Engineering, Psychology, and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

When Your Eyes Move, So Do Your Eardrums  — The Atlantic
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, from Boston University, also studies the neuroscience of hearing, and she is more circumspect. “It is a very interesting and previously unknown phenomenon, which may turn out to be incredibly important,” she says, “But so far, there is no evidence it is. We just don’t yet know why it happens or what it means.”