Steven's Temporal Bone Workshop to Facilitate Physicists x Audiologists Collaborative Learning
One thing that’s quite challenging about collaboration is making sure everyone is on the same page with the challenge and what we are dealing with. With inner ear therapeutics, one of the challenges is for us to understand how hard it really is to access the inner ear, or the cochlea. How small it is, and how it is a unique location within the temporal bone, brings up that scientific challenge. This is something that surprises our collaborators (or non–inner ear biologists) all the time, and it takes a long time to communicate.
In this regard, Steven Tran, our TRIP team member, has been making great resources (3D printed models of the ear) and presentations to communicate the anatomy of the temporal bone and to share the challenges of accessing the inner ear in light of that anatomical knowledge. We call this Steven’s Temporal Bone Workshop.
This week, we had the opportunity for Steven to provide this workshop to our Physicists and Audiologists researchers. Three physicists (part of the TRIP team) were joined by three new Master of Audiology students who are undertaking a Master of Audiology project with Haruna. The aim was for the new audiology students and physicists to get a grasp on the anatomy of the inner ear, as well as the proper anatomical terms.
The workshop was held in a meeting room with a number of students and 3D printed resources, in a highly interactive manner. Many, many questions (a whole bunch) were thrown from both physicists and audiologists—from different perspectives. And of course, Steven did a wonderful job facilitating their learning, while also supporting the exchange of perspectives, identification of challenges, and helping people appreciate the complexity of the inner ear anatomy.
