Indzhykulian Lab

News

      • December, 2025. Congratulations to April Keyes (senior, Harvard College) on the public release of the first crystal structure solved in the lab, wild-type mouse γS-crystallin (PDB: 9Z75)! This work was carried out by April Keyes and Dr. Pedro De-la-Torre, in collaboration with Dr. Eleftherios Paschalis, and represents a major milestone in lab’s structural biology efforts supporting translational research in retinal neuroinflammation.

      • December, 2025. Congratulations to April Keyes (senior, Harvard College) on being selected for the ARO Scholars Program! April will attend the ARO MidWinter Meeting in Puerto Rico with travel support from ARO and has also received $2,500 in ARO research funding to support her work in the lab.

      • October, 2025. Congratulations to April Keyes (senior, Harvard College) for presenting her research at Brookhaven National Laboratory! April was the only undergraduate presenter, showcasing her work in structural biology and hearing-related proteins to a national audience.

      • September, 2025. Congratulations to Frank Yeh, postdoctoral fellow in the lab, on being featured by the Biophysical Society during National Postdoc Appreciation Week for his work on ion channel biophysics and inner-ear mechanoelectrical transduction.

      • September, 2025. Our new paper in Scientific Reports, led by Rubina Simikyan, MS, reports a constitutive Frem2 knockout mouse model that recapitulates key features of Fraser syndrome, including cryptophthalmos, syndactyly, and neonatal lethality due to bilateral renal agenesis, confirming FREM2 as essential for kidney, skin, and eye development.

      • August, 2025. Our new preprint, led by Evan Hale, PhD Candidate in the lab, reports TECTB (TECTB-C225Y) as a novel human deafness gene causing autosomal dominant non-syndromic hearing loss in a multigenerational Nicaraguan family and demonstrates increased susceptibility to noise-induced hearing loss in a Tectb-C225Y knock-in mouse model. This work represents a major collaborative effort with Dr. Barbara Vona, Prof. Guy Richardson, and Dr. James E. Saunders.

      • July, 2025. Congratulations to Dr. Richard Osgood for attending the Microscience Microscopy Congress in Manchester, UK, organized by the Royal Microscopical Society, and for receiving a travel award from the organizers to partially support his participation in this meeting.

      • July, 2025. Dr. Indzhykulian and Dr. Manor co-presented an ARO Education Committee panel session titled “Machine Learning Toolboxes for Hearing Research” as part of the Cutting-Edge Techniques and Models webinar series, highlighting open-source machine-learning tools for hearing research. YouTube link.

      • May, 2025. Dr. Christopher Buswinka (Harvard Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology) was featured by Harvard Medical School for his doctoral work applying artificial intelligence and computer vision to hearing research in the Indzhykulian laboratory, highlighting the development of open-source tools for large-scale analysis of inner-ear imaging data.

      • May, 2025. Our study identifying druggable binding sites and small-molecule modulators of the hair-cell mechanotransduction channel TMC1 was published in Communications Biology! Led by Dr. Pedro De-la-Torre and Claudia Martínez-García, in collaboration with Dr. David Ramírez, this work integrates molecular modeling, pharmacophore screening, and experimental validation to identify FDA-approved compounds that modulate TMC1 function.

      • March, 2025. Congratulations to Dr. Richard Osgood, for receiving an Amelia Peabody Travel Award to support his attendance at the Microscience Microscopy Congress (mmc25) to present his work in advanced microscopy and ultrastructural analysis.

      • January, 2025. Congratulations to Dr. Frank Yeh, postdoctoral fellow in the lab, for receiving an Amelia Peabody Travel Award to support his attendance at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting, where he will present his work on ion channel biophysics.

      • November, 2024. Evan Hale, PhD Candidate in the lab, and April Keyes presented a poster at the Harvard Undergraduate Research Opportunities Symposium (HUROS) titled “Linking Protein Structure and Disease,” highlighting structural studies relevant to degenerative eye and hearing disorders.

      • October, 2024. Dr. Frank Yeh was awarded an NIH NIDCD F32 Postdoctoral Fellowship (F32DC022491) “Investigating the Role of Tip Link Biophysics on MET Function,” which examines how the length and calcium-dependent flexibility of tip-link proteins regulate hair-cell mechanoelectrical transduction using gene-therapy-enabled protein manipulation, electrophysiology, and computational modeling. Congratulations, Frank!

      • September, 2024. Christopher Buswinka (Harvard Program in Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology) successfully defended his doctoral thesis, “Applications of Computer Vision on the Biology of the Inner Ear.” His work resulted in three publications, including two peer-reviewed papers and one preprint. Congratulations, Dr. Buswinka!

      • September, 2024. Dr. Richard Osgood participated in the Tomography and Cryo-FIB Workshop hosted by the Midwest Center for Cryo-Electron Tomography (MCCET) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The intensive course provided training in cryo-electron tomography, FIB milling, correlative imaging, and cryo-ET data collection and analysis.

      • September, 2024. Evan Hale, PhD Candidate, was awarded an NIH NIDCD F31 Predoctoral Fellowship (F31DC021855) “Effects of the TECTB-C225Y Variant in the Inner Ear,” investigating the molecular and functional consequences of a deafness-causing TECTB variant in a mouse model. Congratulations, Evan!

      • September, 2024. Congratulations to April Keyes for receiving Harvard College Research Program (HCRP) funding to support her undergraduate research in the lab for the Fall 2024 term.

      • July, 2024. Congratulations to Dr. Frank Yeh, who was accepted to and attended the Biology of the Inner Ear course at Woods Hole, MA—an intensive, highly selective training program focused on inner-ear biology and auditory neuroscience.

      • July, 2024. Christopher Buswinka,PhD Candidate, was selected as one of two recipients of the 2024 Helen Carr Peake and William T. Peake Research Prize, recognizing his work developing automated, AI- and machine-learning–based computer vision tools for hearing research. The award includes a $2,500 cash prize.

      • June, 2024. Dr. Indzhykulian presented an invited keynote lecture titled “Use of Machine Learning and Data Science in the Hearing Field” at the Mechanics of Hearing Workshop, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

      • May, 2024. Congratulations to April Keyes for receiving Harvard College Research Program (HCRP) funding to support her undergraduate research in the lab for the Summer 2024 term.

      • April, 2024. April Keyes presented a poster at the Stanford Undergraduate Research Conference on engineered crystallin variants for treating retinal neuroinflammation. This work was performed in collaboration with Dr. Eleftherios Paschalis.

      • April, 2024. April Keyes presented a poster at the Harvard Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Undergraduate Research Symposium on the structural characterization of crystallin-γS to support a better understanding of its role in retinal neuroinflammation.

      • February, 2024. April Keyes became an authorized user at Brookhaven National Laboratory beamlines, supporting her X-ray crystallography work.

      • January, 2024. Congratulations to April Keyes for receiving Harvard College Research Program (HCRP) funding to support her undergraduate research in the lab for the Spring 2024 term.

      • September, 2023. Congratulations to April Keyes for receiving Harvard College Research Program (HCRP) funding to support her undergraduate research in the lab for the Fall 2023 term.

      • August, 2023. April Keyes, undergraduate researcher in the lab, presented a talk at the PRISE Final Presentation Symposium focused on the atomic structure and interaction between Crystallin-γS and Interleukin-1β and their role in retinal neuroinflammation.

      • May, 2023. Congratulations to Joseph Brower (Harvard University) for successfully defending his undergraduate senior thesis, “Structural Characterization and Investigation of Mini-Protocadherin-15 Proteins for Usher Syndrome Type 1F Gene Therapy,” conducted in the our laboratory. His work included extensive sturcutral work and contributed to two manuscript publications.

      • May, 2023. Congratulations to April Keyes for receiving PRISE (Program for Research in Science and Engineering) funding to support her undergraduate summer research in the lab.

      • May, 2023. Congratulations to Joseph Brower on receiving The Herchel Smith–Harvard Undergraduate Research Program Foundation grant to support his undergraduate research in the lab.

      • April, 2023. Congratulations to Joseph Brower on receiving a Mary Gordon Roberts Mind Brain Behavior Interfaculty Initiative Summer Fellowship Foundation grant to support his senior thesis research work in the lab.

      • November, 2022. Congratulations to Dr. Pedro De-la-Torre for getting a Travel Award to present his poster at the 2023 Association for Research in Otolaryngology Annual meeting in Orlando, FL! 

      • November, 2022. Shout-out to Joseph Brower (Junior at Harvard College) for presenting a poster at the Harvard Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Science (HUROS) Fair! Joseph reported the first crystal structure solved by our group. Great teamwork, Pedro De-la-Torre and Joseph Brower! 

      • October, 2022. Congratulations to Evan Hale  (PhD Candidate, Harvard Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program) for presenting a talk on his AAV-based Ush1F gene therapy project at the SHBT graduate program retreat in Falmouth, Cape Cod! 

      • October, 2022. Shout-out to Chris Buswinka (PhD Candidate, Harvard Speech and Hearing Bioscience and Technology Program) for presenting a poster on his mitochondria segmentation work at The Harvard Center for Nanoscale Systems! 

      • October, 2022. Auntara Nandi, an undergraduate student from Birla Institute Of Technology & Science (Pilani University, India) has joined our team as an Undergraduate Research Assistant. Welcome, Auntara!

      • October, 2022. Check out this short testimony by Hannah Corderman, a young woman with Usher syndrome, illustrating the impact Usher syndrome can have on countless lives.

      • September, 2022. Congratulations to Rubina Simikyan for presenting a poster focusing on the visual deficit in the Ush1F mouse model at the HMS Research Assistant symposium! 

      • September, 2022. Karina Paola Martínez Pérez, a Master’s student at the Universidad del Atlántico (Colombia), joined our team as a Predoctoral Fellow. Welcome, Karina!

      • August, 2022. Aaron Paul, a sophomore in the Accelerated Physician-Scientist Program (BS/MD) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Albany Medical College, joined our team as a Student Intern. Welcome, Aaron!

      • June, 2022. Our collaborative multi-PI R01 grant proposal on mini-PCDH15 therapy for Usher 1F, with David Corey (Harvard Neurobiology) and Marcos Sotomayor (Ohio State) has been funded by NIH, and will support the development of this therapy for five years! Check out this brief announcement on our Department’s webpage.

      • June, 2022. Mona Jawad, an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaignmajor with a major in bioengineering and minor in computer science, joined our team as a summer student intern. Welcome, Mona!

      • April, 2022. Congratulations to Tyler Morris for completing his work in the laboratory and submitting his undergraduate Senior Thesis Project! 

      • March, 2022. Congratulations to Joseph Brower for securing a Program for Research in Science and Engineering (PRISE) fellowship for this summer! 

      • February, 2022. Congratulations to Richard Osgood for securing an ARO Travel Award to attend this year’s meeting! 

      • January, 2022. Our collaborative multi-PI R01 NIH grant proposal on mini-PCDH15 therapy for Usher 1F, with David Corey (Harvard Neurobiology) and Marcos Sotomayor (Ohio State), got a great score and was recommended for funding!

      • January, 2022. Rubina Simikyan, a Senior at Emmanuel College studying Biology with a concentration in Health Sciences, joined our team as a part-time Undergraduate Research Assistant. Welcome, Rubina!

      • January, 2022. Hidetomi Nitta, a fourth-year undergraduate student at Northeastern University with a major in Biology, joined our team as a full-time Undergraduate Research Assistant through Northeastern’s COOP program. Welcome Hidetomi!

      • December, 2021. Emily Nguyen, a highschool senior at Fenway High School, joined our team as a student intern. Welcome, Emily!

      • December, 2021. Congratulations to Richard Osgood for becoming a Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society!  

      • November, 2021. The National Institute On Deafness And Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of National Institutes of Health (NIH) has approved our diversity supplement request, providing funding to support an additional position in the lab!

      • November, 2021. Congratulations to Cris Buswinka for getting an oportunity to present a podium talk at ARO 2022! 

      • August, 2021. The NIH Office of the Director funded our proposal for an “Administrative Supplement to Support Collaborations to Improve the AI/ML-Readiness of NIH-Supported Data”. Prepared together with Chris Buswinka, a graduate student in the lab, and based on his preliminary studies, this funding will be used to generate and share data annotations that can be used to train AI/ML-based solutions. Congratulations, Chris! 

      • July, 2021. After almost a 2-year delay due to COVID-19 travel restrictions, Dr. Richard Osgood finally joins our team as a postdoctoral fellow! Welcome, Richard! 

      • July, 2021. Rachel Gamburg, a rising junior at Bucknell University, joined the laboratory as an Undergraduate Research Assistant. Welcome, Rachel!

      • June 2021. Joseph Brower, a rising sophomore at Harvard College, joins our team as an Undergraduate Research Assistant. Welcome, Joseph! 

      • February 2021. Tyler Morris, a junior Harvard College student, joins our team as an Undergraduate Research Assistant. Welcome, Tyler! 

      • April 2020. Our data descriptor manuscript entitled “Serial scanning electron microscopy of anti-PKHD1L1 immuno-gold labeled mouse hair cell stereocilia bundles” was accepted for publicatin to Scientific Data. This work was done in collaboration with the Corey laboratory. 

      • July 2019. One of collaborative projects in our lab has been featured by the Bertarelli Foundation in a short movie posted on Foundation’s YouTube channel.

    Neuroscience for Sensory Disorders: #BertarelliNeuro at Harvard Medical School

        • May 2019. Pedro De-La-Torre, PhD is joining our laboratory as a postdoctoal fellow, adding his strong structural biology and X-ray crystallography background to the lab’s portfolio. 

        • April 2019. David Rosenberg, MD is joining our laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow to expand our effort on gene therapy!

        • April 2019. We are very pleased to welcome Dhun Chauhan to join our group as an undergraduate research assistant starting this summer!

        • March 2019. We are very pleased to welcome Grace Zhang to join our group tnis summer! 

        • March 2019. The National Institute On Deafness And Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) of National Institutes of Health (NIH) has approved our diversity supplement request, providing funding to support an additional position in the lab!

        • January 2019. We are very pleased to welcome Daniel Hathaway to join our group as an undergraduate research assistant!

        • October 2018. The Bertarelli Program in Translational Neuroscience and Neuroengineering at Harvard Medical School has granted a Bertarelli Collaborative Research Award to support our work on Usher syndrome.

        • June 2018. Thanks to a $3 million gift from an anonymous donor supplemented with additionals funds, our laboratory has received a Development Award from HMS Quadrangle Fund for Advancing and Seeding Translational Research (Q-FASTR) to carry out an AAV-based gene therapy project.  This work will be done in collaboration with Dr. David Corey (Harvard Neurobiology) and Dr. Marcos Sotomayor (Ohio State).

        • May 2018. Our R01 application has been recommended for funding by the National Institute On Deafness and Other Communication Disorders Advisory Council! The official Notice of Award to follow in July!

        • May 2018. We are very excited to welcome postdoctoral fellows Dr. Olga Strelkova and Dr. ChunJie Tian to join our group in July 2018!

        • February 2018. Our R01 application entitled “Molecular Basis of Hair Cell Stereocilia Bundle Morphology” has received favorable reviews and a promising score, suggesting it could potentially be funded! 

        • January 2018. Indzhykulian lab opened in January 2018!