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BLI Is Site For Lions Club Visit

On December 30, 2007, the Lions Club at the University of California, Irvine, hosted a visit from the Lions International President and a group of over 20 other dignitaries. This visit resulted from an effort by a number of faculty and graduate students at UCI who founded a Lions Club on campus with the eventual hope of establishing long term funding for hearing related research from Lions International. The International President attended with the express interest in learning about the hearing loss research at UCI and what projects are planned for the near future.

The tour began at Beckman Laser Institute where Dr. Hamid Djalilian and graduate student Jeff Carroll welcomed the guests and offered the first general talks. Mr. Carroll noted that BLI was selected as a site for the visit because of the level of professionalism exemplified by its research and the dignified decor that the BLI library offered for such an important event. The tour continued to the laboratory of Dr. Fan-Gang Zeng, Hearing and Speech Director, Department of Head and Neck Surgery, at the medical school to hear about the work being done on cochlear implants and to meet two actual cochlear implant patients who shared their experiences. After lunch and four more short talks by Dr. Fan-Gang Zeng, Dr. Vanessa Rothholtz, graduate student Matt Korn and Dr. Raju Metherate, the visit concluded with the invited guests expressing a desire to help find funding for future research projects.