Paul Fuchs, Ph.D., is the David M. Rubenstein Research Professor of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery in the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, with secondary appointments in Biomedical Engineering and Neuroscience. He is co-director of the Center for Sensory Biology in the Institute for Basic Biomedical Sciences at Hopkins. 

He received a Ph.D. in Neuro- and Bio-behavioral Sciences from Stanford University in 1979 for studies of presynaptic inhibition at the crayfish neuromuscular junction.  After postdoctoral training with John Nicholls at Stanford, Fuchs joined Robert Fettiplace at Cambridge University to begin his focus on synaptic physiology of the inner ear.  In 1984 he was appointed Assistant Professor of Physiology at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and in 1995 was recruited to the Johns Hopkins Center for Hearing and Balance. 

His research centers on the cellular electrophysiology of the inner ear with particular attention paid to excitability and synaptic transmission between sensory hair cells, afferent and efferent neurons. These efforts have: 1.) discovered the molecular mechanisms by which acetylcholine release from efferent neurons inhibits hair cells, 2.) detailed the diversity of synaptic ribbon function among cochlear hair cells, 3.) catalogued the roles of gated ion channels in hair cells and 4.) provided the first evidence for the function of type II cochlear afferents.  At Johns Hopkins Dr. Fuchs oversees research programs in Otolaryngology, and is director of the T32 training grant to the Center for Hearing and Balance. His laboratory has trained more than 30 doctoral and postdoctoral students. He teaches regularly in the graduate, medical and undergraduate curriculum, serving as co-director of “Structure and Function of the Auditory and Vestibular Periphery” with Elisabeth Glowatzki, and directing “Cellular and Molecular Biology of Sensation” with Stewart Hendry, as well as lecturing in the Neuroscience and Medical school curricula. He lectures regularly in the U.S. and abroad, and directs the semi-annual Biology of the Inner Ear course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA.

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