University College London
Dr Marcela Lipovsek is a Research Fellow at the UCL Ear Institute. Her research focuses on how inner ear sensory cells develop and change throughout life, including as they age, and how to regrow them once they’re lost.
Marcela obtained a PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. In 2013, she moved to the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King’s College London. In 2021, she joined the UCL Ear Institute and set up her research group.
Dr Lipovsek is a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Sir Henry Dale Fellow.
Understanding the patterns of gene activity in nerve cells in the inner ear in different types of hearing loss
Read about Marcela’s research projectMarcela’s approaches to hearing research
I am biased here. I think that we have learned a lot about the individual cell types in the inner ear from single-cell genomics studies. These are studies where we analyse all the genes that are active in each individual cell in the ear and the auditory nerve cells in the brain, helping us understand how all the pieces fit and function together.
We are working towards improving our understanding of how all the different pieces of the hearing and balance systems work together at the single cell level, and how the different pieces are affected in different ways when things go wrong.
It is an enormous vote of confidence that I am honoured to have received. In practical terms, RNID funding is making it possible for us to study auditory nerve cells in mouse models of hearing loss.
In logistical terms, the PhD studentship is crucial. There is currently a very reduced offer of PhD programmes, that typically tend to focus on other aspects of neuroscience. The RNID PhD studentship is therefore making an outsized and significant contribution to hearing research.