When biomedical engineer H. Steven Colburn established BU’s Hearing Research Center in 1995, he envisioned experts from across the field of hearing science collaborating on research projects. It worked just as he had planned.

Over the years, the Hearing Research Center (HRC) has helped researchers like Gerald Kidd, a professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences and a faculty member in the HRC from its inception, to conduct cross-disciplinary projects. One of them involved developing a prototype for a visually guided hearing aid that uses an eye-tracker to help the wearer focus on a particular sound based on where they are looking, something that is particularly helpful when having a conversation in a noisy environment.

“Early on, the Hearing Research Center was kind of unique because we had an expert studying almost every step in the auditory pathway, from the periphery up to the brain,” says Kidd, who leads the HRC’s Psychoacoustics Laboratory and specializes in research on how we process sound in loud environments.

Colburn, a professor emeritus of biomedical engineering, retired in 2021, and Tyler Perrachione became the HRC’s new director. Perrachione, an associate professor of speech, language, and hearing sciences, was already well-versed in the HRC’s work. He’d been leading the Communication Neuroscience Research Laboratory and was prepared to build on Colburn’s vision.

“The HRC has a number of faculty members, and many have labs of their own,” says Perrachione, whose research focuses on how the brain decodes sound and makes linguistic meaning. “But there’s a shared thread across all of these laboratories, which is hearing and how the brain solves this puzzle of sound. The center is an opportunity to bring people together to engender new collaborations, to bring in speakers who are of interest to lots of people, and to catalyze new ideas through interactions.”

And as of the 2023–24 academic year, the HRC has moved from the College of Engineering to Sargent College.

The move fits with students’ growing interest in hearing science, Perrachione says. “The undergraduate program in speech, language, and hearing sciences, historically, has prepared students to go to graduate school in speech pathology,” he says. “But increasingly, more and more of our undergraduates want to go to graduate school in audiology, and they want to conduct research in hearing science. Over the past five or so years, we’ve gone from having one student every other year who wanted to be an audiologist to having three or four students a year who want to be audiologists.”

Now, we’re thinking about what the Sargent community brings to hearing that’s different from the engineering community.

—Tyler Perrachione

Perrachione is excited by the move. “Now, we’re thinking about what the Sargent community brings to hearing that’s different from the engineering community,” he says. “We can start to investigate some of the more clinical implications of hearing and hearing rehabilitation. And how does that link with other aspects of people’s psychology, behavior, or resources? How is hearing situated in public health? How is hearing situated in psychology and cognition and the brain? I think that there will be a more health-oriented and person-oriented approach to hearing-related questions now that things are at Sargent.”—Mara Sassoon