Inaugural Lecture: Professor Grant Searchfield

Date: 17 May 2023

Title: Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner

In his inaugural lecture, Professor Searchfield shared his career experiences chasing a cure for tinnitus (head and ear sounds “beep beep”). Beginning as a newly graduated audiologist struggling for solutions for tinnitus, he and his colleagues’ trials and tribulations in developing a tinnitus digital poly-therapeutic will be recounted.

Grant has been an audiologist since 1994 and obtained his Doctorate in Audiology from the University of Auckland in 2004. He is currently academic head of the University of Auckland’s Audiology Section, and a deputy director of the Eisdell Moore Centre for hearing and balance research. Grant is a primary investigator in the Centre for Brain Research and a member of Te Titoki Mataora MedTech Research Translator. He is a Tinnitus section editor for Frontiers in Audiology and Otology, Associate Editor for Scientific Reports and Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience, Neuroinflammation and Neuropathy and a Review Editor in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the American Tinnitus Association. Grant is well known internationally for his research investigating the use of sound and hearing aids for tinnitus management and is a founder of two University spinout companies “Tinnitus Tunes” and “TrueSilence Therapeutics”. Grant is married to Leslie and has two daughters Alexia and D’Acy.