Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1965 |
| Occupation | Conservation biologist |
Caitlin Elizabeth O'Connell-Rodwell (born 1965) is an American conservation biologist and author. [1] She is an instructor at Harvard Medical School, scientific consultant, co-founder and CEO of Utopia Scientific, and an expert on elephants. Her elephant research was the subject of the Elephant King, an award-winning Smithsonian Channel documentary. [2]
Caitlin O’Connell received her B.Sc. in biology at Fairfield University in 1987 with a minor in French and art history and in 1991 her M.Sc. at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in ecology, evolution and conservation biology, involving research on seismo-acoustic communication of planthoppers. [3]
In the course of three-year government contract involving efforts to mitigate conflicts between farmers and African elephant, she observed that also the elephants performed seismo-acoustic communication. Based on five years of experiments with captive elephants in the United States, Zimbabwe and India, [3] she earned her Ph.D. in ecology at the University of California, Davis in 2000. [4] She has subsequently worked at Stanford University Medical School as postdoctoral fellow, [5] as assistant professor and (currently) as instructor at its Department of Otolaryngology. [4]
In October 2002, together with Timothy Rodwell, she founded Utopia Scientific, a non‐profit corporation in San Diego that is dedicated to science and public health education. In spring 2013 she joined Georgia College as the inaugural Martha Daniel Newell Visiting Distinguished Scholar. [6]
O'Connell's work has focused on elephant communication and elephant societies. [6] At Stanford's Department of Otolaryngology, she investigated the possibility of developing a vibrotactile hearing aid inspired by her studies of the elephant vibrotactile sense, including the hearing-impaired and the profoundly deaf. Currently, she is funded by a National Institutes of Health grant to investigate the elephant middle ear and bone conduction hearing in relation to human hearing and bone conduction hearing aids [7] [8] (For related approaches, see: Sensory substitution.)
In October 2007 she was awarded the Distinguished Young Alumna Award of the University of California, Davis.
The book The elephant scientist, which she wrote together with Donna M. Jackson and for which she and her husband Timothy C. Rodwell provided the photographs, received the Sibert Medal in 2012.
She received the Outstanding Science Trade Book award 2012 and the Junior Library Guild Selection 2011. [4]
Caitlin O'Connell(-Rodwell) is author of numerous peer-reviewed articles and several popular science books.
Academic books:
Popular science books:
She has published numerous contributions in the media, among others in Scientific American, National Geographic magazine, National Geographic Channel, Africa Geographic magazine, Discovery Channel, Discover Magazine, Science News, Fox Channel, BBC Online, The Writer and Smithsonian magazine. [4]
Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae and the order Proboscidea. The order was formerly much more diverse during the Pleistocene, but most species became extinct during the Late Pleistocene epoch. Distinctive features of elephants include a long proboscis called a trunk, tusks, large ear flaps, pillar-like legs, and tough but sensitive skin. The trunk is used for breathing and is prehensile, bringing food and water to the mouth, and grasping objects. Tusks, which are derived from the incisor teeth, serve both as weapons and as tools for moving objects and digging. The large ear flaps assist in maintaining a constant body temperature as well as in communication. African elephants have larger ears and concave backs, whereas Asian elephants have smaller ears, and convex or level backs.
Bone conduction is the conduction of sound to the inner ear primarily through the bones of the skull, allowing the hearer to perceive audio content without blocking the ear canal. Bone conduction transmission occurs constantly as sound waves vibrate bone, specifically the bones in the skull, although it is hard for the average individual to distinguish sound being conveyed through the bone as opposed to the sound being conveyed through the air via the ear canal. Intentional transmission of sound through bone can be used with individuals with normal hearing — as with bone-conduction headphones — or as a treatment option for certain types of hearing impairment. Bone generally conveys lower-frequency sounds better than higher frequency sounds.
Unilateral hearing loss (UHL) is a type of hearing impairment where there is normal hearing in one ear and impaired hearing in the other ear.
Heather A. Berlin is an American neuroscientist and licensed clinical psychologist noted for her work in science communication and science outreach. Her research focuses on brain-behavior relationships affecting the prevention and treatment of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric disorders. She is also interested in the neural basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity. Berlin is host of the PBS series Science Goes to the Movies, the international Discovery Channel series Superhuman Showdown, and StarTalk All-Stars with Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Rodwell, a name of Old English origin, is a locational surname deriving from any one of various places in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, and Kent, England.In English, the meaning of the name Rodwell is "lives by the spring near the road". There are places in Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire called Radwell, and both are recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 as "Radeuuelle"; the name means "the red spring or stream", derived from the Olde English pre-7th-century "read", red, with "well(a)", spring or stream. Rodwell, a parish in the diocese of Rochester, Kent, derives its name from the Olde English personal name "Hroda", a short form of various compound names with the first element "hrod", renown, with "well(a)", as before.
Seismic or vibrational communication is a process of conveying information through mechanical (seismic) vibrations of the substrate. The substrate may be the earth, a plant stem or leaf, the surface of a body of water, a spider's web, a honeycomb, or any of the myriad types of soil substrates. Seismic cues are generally conveyed by surface Rayleigh or bending waves generated through vibrations on the substrate, or acoustical waves that couple with the substrate. Vibrational communication is an ancient sensory modality and it is widespread in the animal kingdom where it has evolved several times independently. It has been reported in mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, insects, arachnids, crustaceans and nematode worms. Vibrations and other communication channels are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but can be used in multi-modal communication.
Hearing Health Foundation (HHF) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to prevent and cure hearing loss and tinnitus through groundbreaking research, and promote hearing health. In 2011, the Deafness Research Foundation changed its name to Hearing Health Foundation.
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham is an American bioengineer and neuroscientist. She is the founding Director of the Carnegie Mellon University Neuroscience Institute, the George A. and Helen Dunham Cowan Professor of Auditory Neuroscience, and Professor of Psychology, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Biomedical Engineering.
Susan McConnell is a neurobiologist who studies the development of neural circuits in the mammalian cerebral cortex. She is a professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University, where she is the Susan B. Ford Professor of Humanities and Sciences, a Bass University Fellow, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Monita Chatterjee is an auditory scientist and the Director of the Auditory Prostheses & Perception Laboratory at Boys Town National Research Hospital. She investigates the basic mechanisms underlying auditory processing by cochlear implant listeners.
Cartilage conduction is a pathway by which sound signals are transmitted to the inner ear. In 2004, Hiroshi Hosoi discovered this pathway and named “cartilage conduction”. Hearing by cartilage conduction is distinct from conventional sound-conduction pathways, such as air or bone, because it is realized by touching a transducer on the aural cartilage and does not involve the vibration of the skull bone. Therefore, cartilage conduction is referred to as the “third auditory pathway”.
Cathy Olkin is a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute, focusing on the outer Solar System. She is deputy principal investigator for NASA's Lucy mission examining the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter, which launched in 2021 and will fly past its targets between 2025 and 2033.
Robert V. Shannon is Research Professor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery and Affiliated Research Professor of Biomedical Engineering at University of Southern California, CA, USA. Shannon investigates the basic mechanisms underlying auditory neural processing by users of cochlear implants, auditory brainstem implants, and midbrain implants.
Anu Sharma is an American audiologist and academic. She is a professor in the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Science and a fellow at the Institute for Cognitive Science and Center for Neuroscience at University of Colorado Boulder. She is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Otolaryngology and Audiology at the University of Colorado Denver Medical School. Sharma received her doctorate at Northwestern University while working under Nina Kraus, PhD.
Debara Lyn Tucci is an American otolaryngologist, studying ear, nose, and throat conditions. She co-founded the Duke Hearing Center and currently serves as a Professor of Surgery and Director of the Cochlear Implant Program at Duke University. In September 2019 she became Director of the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, one of the National Institutes of Health's 27 Institutes and Centers.
Etosha R. Cave is an American mechanical engineer based in Berkeley, California. She is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Twelve, a startup that recycles carbon dioxide.
Mary J. O'Connell is an evolutionary genomicist and Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham. She is the Principal Investigator of the Computational & Molecular Evolutionary Biology Group in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham.
Elephants communicate with each other in various ways, including touching, visual displays, vocalisations, seismic vibrations, and semiochemicals.
Mary T. Hawn is an American surgeon. She is the chair of surgery and the Emile Holman Professor in Surgery at Stanford University.
Kathleen E. Cullen is an American–Canadian biomedical engineer and neuroscientist. She is known for her work combining computational and systems neuroscience to understand how the brain encodes and processes self-motion (vestibular) information to ensure the maintenance of balance and stable perception. Her research also focuses on extending this knowledge to further advance the development of novel diagnostic tools, treatments, training, and rehabilitative strategies for patients.
Websites on Caitlin O'Connell
Publications about Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell:
Popular science reading and lectures by Caitlin O'Connell-Rodwell:
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
