King’s College London
Karishma is an RNID-funded PhD student at King’s College London, where she is investigating how the eardrum repairs itself after injury.
Through her project, she hopes to make a real difference to people living with chronic eardrum perforations, which can cause hearing loss, discomfort, and recurrent infections.
Finding ways to improve treatments to repair the eardrum after damage
Read about Karishma’s research projectKarishma’s approaches to hearing research
Hearing is deeply connected to how we communicate, connect, and experience the world. When someone loses their hearing, it can affect not only how they perceive sound but also their confidence. Knowing that my research could help restore hearing or prevent its loss is a strong motivator for me.
I hope my research will reveal how eardrum stem cells behave during injury and infection and identify ways to stimulate them in chronic cases where healing fails. In the long term, this could lead to new regenerative treatments that restore hearing and reduce the need for surgery.
The RNID studentship will give me the chance to pursue meaningful, translational research that could directly improve people’s lives. It also connects me to a wider community of scientists and people with hearing loss, reminding me that every experiment contributes to a much larger goal – helping others hear again.