Prof. Dr. med. Tobias Moser is a neuroscientist and otolaryngologist at the Göttingen Campus in Germany. He heads the Institute for Auditory Neuroscience at the University Medical Center Göttingen and leads research groups at the German Primate Center and the Max-Planck-Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences. His main areas of research are synaptic coding and processing of auditory information, disease mechanisms of deafness and innovative approaches to the restoration of hearing in the deaf.
Hearing impairment affects half a billion people worldwide. If left untreated, it impedes speech acquisition, causes social isolation, and increases the risk for depression and cognitive decline. Tobias Moser and his team have fundamentally advanced our mechanistic understanding of hearing and hearing impairment. To tackle this very widespread and disabling disorder, they are developing gene therapy strategies and novel optical cochlear implants, which promise to transform hearing restoration.