Balance Function Assessment and Management

Gary P. Jacobson

Gary P. Jacobson, PhD is Professor and Director of the Division of Audiology at the Vanderbilt Bill Wilkerson Center at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Prior to this he was the Director of the Division of Audiology, and Adjunct Staff in the Department of Neurology for the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan.

He completed his undergraduate studies at California State University at Fullerton. He received his MS in Communicative Disorders (Audiology) at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point and received has PhD from Kent State University. He served as the Chief of the Audiology and Speech Pathology Section (Neurology Service) at the VA Medical Center in Cincinnati from 1979-1988. During that time he served as both Director of the Evoked Potentials Laboratory and, Director of the Intraoperative Monitoring Program for the Department of Neurosurgery, University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Dr. Jacobson is a Past President of the American Society of Neurophysiological Monitoring, and has served on the Scientific Advisory Board and Board of Directors of the American Tinnitus Association. He is the past-editor of The American Journal of Audiology (American Speech-Language Hearing Association) and a past Assistant Editor (Evoked Potentials) for The Journal of the American Academy of Audiology (American Academy of Audiology). He is an Editorial Board member for the journals Brain Topography and Seminars in Hearing. He is an Ad Hoc reviewer for 10 other scientific journals. He has authored and co-authored over 100 publications that cover the areas of tinnitus, dizziness, auditory function, outcome measures development, brain mapping and intraoperative neurophysiology. He is co-editor of the text Handbook of Balance Function Testing. He is a Fellow of the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, and a recipient of the Jerger Career Award for Research in Audiology from the American Academy of Audiology.

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Neil T. Shepard

Neil T. Shepard, PhD is director of the Dizziness and Balance Disorders Program at Mayo Clinic - Rochester, Minnesota, and a professor of audiology in the Mayo Clinical School of Medicine. He received his undergraduate and master's training in electrical and biomedical engineering from University of Kentucky (Lexington, Kentucky) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Massachusetts). He completed his PhD in auditory electrophysiology and clinical audiology from the University of Iowa (Iowa City, Iowa) in 1979. He has specialized in clinical electrophysiology for both the auditory and vestibular systems. Activity over the last 34 years has concentrated on the clinical assessment and rehabilitation of patients with balance disorders and clinical research endeavors related to both assessment and rehabilitation.

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Kamran Barin

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Robert F. Burkard

Robert F. Burkard, PhD, CCC-A is Professor and Chair, Department of Rehabilitation Science, at the University at Buffalo. He earned his BS in Communication Disorders at Buffalo State College, and his MS and PhD in Audiology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He did a post-doc in the Department of Biology at Washington University. His first faculty position (Assistant then Associate Professor) was in the Department of Communication Disorders at Boston University. He moved to the University at Buffalo, where he was an Associate then Full Professor, in the Departments of Communicative Disorders and Sciences, and Otolaryngology. He moved to the Department of Rehabilitation Science, in the School of Public Health and Health Professions, in 2006.

His scholarly interests include acoustics and calibration, auditory physiology, and (more recently) vestibular function and balance. His research in auditory physiology has focused on human and animal auditory evoked potentials, but includes some single-unit electrophysiology and functional imaging studies. He has served as Editor for the American Journal of Audiology, was the Audiology co-Chair of the 2007 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Annual Convention in Boston, has served as vice Chair and Chair of the American National Standards (ANSI) S3 Bioacoustics Accredited Standards Committee, and currently serves as a member of the ASHA Health Care Economics Committee.

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Kristen Janky

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Devin L. McCaslin

Devin L. McCaslin, PhD received a Master's degree in Audiology from Wayne State University and a PhD in Hearing Science from The Ohio State University. He currently serves as the Director of the Vestibular and Balance Program at Mayo Clinic in Rochester and is an Associate Professor in the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine. He has authored and coauthored publications that cover the areas of tinnitus, dizziness, auditory function, and outcome measures development. He is also the author of the textbook VNG/ENG (Plural). Dr. McCaslin's major academic, clinical and research interests relate to clinical electrophysiology, tinnitus and vestibular assessment. He also serves as the Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Academy of Audiology and is President of the American Balance Society.

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