Joint Program with NIDCD

The members of the C-CEBH at UM enjoy extensive collaboration as part of the Center for Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (C-CEBH). The breadth of the research opportunities in auditory neuroscience is further extended by our collaborative agreement between C-CEBH investigators and the intramural faculty of the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Many of the NIDCD researchers are now adjunct faculty at UM.

Investigators at UM and NIDCD share many common research interests and actively collaborate in a growing number of research projects. This collaboration is often established as a result of the interests doctoral and postdoctoral fellows who may work in laboratories at UM, at NIDCD, or in both locations. Indeed, the very active participation of faculty from both campuses provides these research collaborations, and the doctoral and postdoctoral fellows, with access to the broadest range of expertise and to facilities and techniques that are unavailable in a single program anywhere else in the world.

Postdoctoral fellows wishing to work with any faculty member in the joint program should contact the appropriate individual faculty member. The faculty are versed in the forms of support available to postdocs. Note that we strongly encourage postdoctoral fellows who might be interested in working jointly with faculty from both institutions in order to further strengthen the research collaborations between programs.

Potential doctoral students are able to do their research with any member of the joint program. The doctoral degree, however, is granted through the University of Maryland. Since all NIDCD faculty involved in the joint program are also adjunct faculty at UM, working towards the degree while pursuing doctoral research at NIDCD is no different than doing research on campus. Students working at NIDCD will have co-mentors, one from NIDCD and one on the UM campus which can lead to exciting research collaborations that benefit all participants.

Individuals wishing to do doctoral work with any of our UM or NIDCD faculty should first contact the investigator(s) whose work interests them. The degree itself is offered by the University of Maryland in any of several UM doctoral programs. Most students do their doctoral work in the Neuroscience and Cognitive Science (NACS) program. However, students with special career interests may prefer to get their degrees through other departments whose faculty are part of C-CEBH (currently: Biology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hearing and Speech Sciences, Linguistics and Psychology).

While students and postdoctoral fellows in the NACS program may elect to work with any of the faculty from C-CEBH and/or NIDCD, they are encouraged to work across laboratories to broaden their training and research experiences.

Students accepted to work with investigators in our program may be supported by a variety of sources. All support includes tuition, fees, and health insurance. Doctoral and postdocal students and postdoctoral fellows working with C-CEBH faculty are eligible for support by a training grant.