Staff Directory

Rose is an undergraduate biochemistry student at Barnard College. She is currently working on developing calcium-sensitive microelectrodes for applications in studying cochlear electrochemistry.

Lauren Chiriboga is a forth-year biomedical engineering Ph.D. student at the Fowler Memorial Laboratory. She studies the cochlea and the mechanics of hearing. By conducting this research, her goal is to help improve the quality of hearing for those with cochlear implants and advance the world's understanding of how hearing works. Outside of lab, Lauren is the secretary of the Columbia chapter of GradSWE - the Graduate Society of Women Engineers. She is also a Presidential Fellow and a Provost Diversity Fellow.

Lauren is a New York native who grew up in Westchester County. She then pursued a B.S. in Physics from New York University, graduating in 2021 as a University Honors Scholar. During her undergraduate studies, she researched analyzing decision-making using information theory. She also interned at the United States Naval Research Laboratory in 2020. 

In her free time, Lauren likes to travel and practice her photography, as well as spend time with her family and friends. 

Kaitlyn was born and raised in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. She obtained her B.S. (December 2022) and M.S. (May 2023) from Northeastern University in Bioengineering with a concentration in Biomedical Devices. During her undergrad, she worked at the Traverso Laboratory at MIT at Brigham and Women's Hospital as a Mechanical Engineering Co-op. At the Traverso Laboratory, she performed proof of concept work on ingestible and implantable devices for the GI Tract. She later worked at Liquiglide, a biomedical start-up, as a Biomedical Engineering Co-op. At Liquiglide she optimized the entirety of the experiments for one client, focusing on lubricant chemistry and data analysis. 

She joined the Fowler Memorial Lab in October 2023, as a Research Associate, where she primarily focused on looking at the different intracellular components within the organ of Corti. This work ranges from dissections to confocal imaging. She recently got accepted into the Ph.D. program at Columbia, where she will continue her research as a graduate student in the Fowler Memorial Lab. She will continue to observe and perturb different intracellular components within the organ of Corti, while also performing vibrometry measurements using the OCT. 

In her free time, Kaitlyn likes to go on walks in the park, paint, cook and eat delicious food, and spend time with friends and family.

Isadora Comens is a third-year medical student at the Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. At the Fowler Memorial Laboratory, she assists in development and testing of a novel piezoelectric implantable microphone using sheep as a large animal model. The aim of this research will be development of a totally implantable cochlear implant.

Isadora is originally from Kansas City, Missouri. She received a B.S. in Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of Texas at Dallas, where she investigated the neurobiology of pain and migraine in small animal models using behavioral studies and calcium imaging.

Outside of the lab, Isadora participates in the Musicians’ Guild, performs with the VP&S Symphony Orchestra, and volunteers with CHRIA’s Asylum Clinic.

In her free time, Isadora enjoys roller skating and knitting as well as playing the violin.

My MS and PhD degrees are in Physics (Barnard College and MIT).  As a graduate student I started working on sensing systems, electroreception as a doctoral student and auditory mechanics as a post-doc and beyond. 

My lab studies inner and middle ear mechanics and electromechanics, with in vivo measurements of motion, pressure, and extracellular electrical responses.  I have designed and built specialized sensors and developed specialized techniques, in particular the micron-scale pressure sensors used to measure pressure waves in the cochlea. The introduction of Spectral Domain Optical Coherence Tomography (SD-OCT) to imaging and motion measurements within the cochlea's sensory tissue has opened up a new frontier in explorations of cochlear mechanics.  My lab tailored a commercial OCT system (Thorlabs Telesto) for time-locked motion measurements, and we have used it fruitfully in intracochlear measurements. 

My interest in middle ear mechanics is long-standing, and the eardrum's ability to transmit sound to the inner ear with high fidelity, while its own motion appears so disordered, still amazes me.  The middle ear is an active system that is adjusted by two muscles that attach to the middle ear bones (ossicles) and our recent work has explored the effect of these muscles on sound transmission.   

The lab also has clinically motivated work ongoing.  For several years I have collaborated with colleagues at Columbia, Massachusetts Eye and Ear / Harvard, and MIT to develop the microphone for a totally implantable cochlear implant.  I also collaborate at Columbia on a project developing techniques for drug delivery to the cochlea.

Dan is an undergraduate student at Columbia Engineering studying biomedical engineering and previously studied physics at Simmons University (3+2). She is currently working on developing a fully implantable microphone, focusing on the electronics. Her past research experience includes focused ultrasound in neurosurgery. Dan was awarded the 2022 Robert W. Young Award from the Acoustical Society of America for her thesis project exploring ultrasonic Lamb waves as an intracranial pressure monitoring method. 

Dan is member of Columbia BME DEI Committee. Dan is also passionate about teaching physics and was named Outstanding TA at Simmons. Her hobby in visual arts resulted in magazine layout and graphic design works. Dan calls many places home, including District #7, Vietnam and Boston, MA. 

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.