Clark Elliott Strimbu

Associate Research Scientist

Elliott Strimbu received his PhD in physics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) working under Dolores Bozovic.  His graduate work involved using high speed (500 to 10,000 frames per second) video microscopy to study the motion of frog saccular hair bundles.  Using high speed video instead of conventional photodiode-based imaging techniques allowed the group to study multiple hair bundles simultaneously and also to leave the overlying otolithic membrane (an extracellular structure somewhat analogous to the cochlea's tectorial membrane) intact in the in vitro preparation. 

Following graduate school, Elliott was a post doc with Anders Fridberger's group first at the Karolinska Institute and later at Linköping University, both in Sweden.  There Elliott used confocal microscopy and fluorescent calcium imaging to study the effects of loud sounds on hair bundle mechanics and the extracellular calcium concentration in the tectorial membrane. 

After his time in Sweden, Elliott joined the Fowler Memorial Laboratory first as a post doc and later as a research scientist.  He is using the lab's OCT to study cochlear mechanics.  Some highlights of his work are spatial variation in the vibrations of the structures within the organ of Corti and the use of pharmacological agents to selectively and transiently knock out individual components of the cochlea's active process.