Spotlight

Fluorescent markers are often used to visualize the location of proteins within cells. This three-dimensional reconstruction of several inner hair cells shows the distribution of calretinin (green), ctbp2 (blue) and chromatin (red) in the cell. Such visualizations allow us to better understand the intricate, labyrinth-like structure of the mammalian cochlea and the role that thousands of proteins have in hearing.

Welcome to SHBT

The strange but familiar fact that an idea, an emotion, a warning, a song, can travel from one person’s brain to another depends on the dauntingly complex, deeply fascinating chain reaction known as human communication. At the Harvard-MIT Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology (SHBT), we study every link in that chain, at every level of understanding, from biochemistry to cognition.

Our faculty includes physicists, biologists, psychologists, linguists, clinicians, neurophysiologists, and at least five kinds of engineers. Our doctoral students cover the same dynamic range. Together, we take a strikingly cross-disciplinary approach, pursuing innovative answers to some very big questions: How do speech and hearing work? How do the mechanisms go wrong? And what can we do to restore them?

SHBT News and Events

SHBT End-of-Summer Talks

Monday and Tuesday, September 8th and 9th
Room E25-111
4:00 - 4:15 Welcome and introduction of incoming students
4:15 - 5:15 Talks
5:15 - 5:30 Break
5:30 - 6:30 Talks
6:30 Dinner (Room E25-119)
Abstracts to be available here in the first week of September

SHBT Thesis Defense

Who: Serhii Zhak
Title:Modeling and Design of an Active Silicon Cochlea
When: Thursday, August 28, 1:00 PM
Where: Allen Room (36-462)

SHBT Thesis Defense

Who: Lauryn Zipse
Title:A MEG Investigation of Lexical Access in Aphasia
When: Monday, July 28, 1:00 PM
Where: E25-119

Roozbeh Ghaffari (SHBT '08) and team win MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition

Recent SHBT graduate Roozbeh Ghaffari and his teammates were awarded the grand prize in MIT's 100K Entrepreneurship Competition for a business plan for Diagnostics for All, a nonprofit company that has developed a unique process for making simple medical test kits out of paper. The company's inexpensive tests require only a single drop of blood to provide a color-coded response indicating the presence of any of several different diseases.

Read the entire MIT press release here.

The Diagnostics for All team also won the HBS Business Plan Contest. Read more.

SHBT Faculty Quoted in NYT

SHBT faculty Dr. Steven Rauch is quoted in an article in the New York Times about keeping your ears healthy, one piece of a series on "A guided tour of your body" in the Health section.

Recent News and Events

SHBT Thesis Defense

Who: Barry Jacobson
Title:Combined-Channel Instantaneous Frequency Analysis for Audio Source Separation Based on Comodulation
When: Wednesday June 19, 12:00pm
Where: MIT Haus Room (36-428)