Home > About NIBIB > Staff Directories > Scientific Program Staff Directory

E-mail this page

Dr. Richard A. Baird is the Director of the Division of Interdisciplinary Training at the NIBIB. Dr. Baird obtained the B.S. in Electrical Engineering (1975) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (1981) from the University of California, Berkeley. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Chicago (1981-1984), he became a research scientist (1984-1998) at the R.S Dow Neurological Sciences Institute and an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, Oregon. In 1998, Dr. Baird became the Head of the Fay and Carl Simons Center for Biology and Hearing and Deafness at the Central Institute for the Deaf, Spencer T. Olin Professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing at Washington University, and an adjunct faculty member of the Department of Otolaryngology and the Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. He also founded and directed the Inner Ear consortium (1999), a group encouraging collaboration among researchers working on the development, function, and regeneration of the inner ear and supporting state-of-the-art core facilities in digital imaging, electron microscopy, molecular biology, and electronic services. In 2002, he became Director of Research of the Harold W. Siebens Hearing Research Center at Central Institute for the Deaf. Dr. Baird joined the NIBIB in October 2005.

Expertise

• Extramural Training and Career Development

Research Interests

• Transduction and information processing in hair cells
• Hair cell development, repair, and regeneration
• Synaptogenesis and injury-induced synaptic remodeling