Our Story
Co-founder
Chief Scientist
Wayne Barber MD, FACS
Yale Medical School,
Residency at Harvard Mass Eye & Ear - Mass General Hospital
Ear disease has been my primary clinical, surgical and research focus since my residency at Harvard (a few decades ago). Treating pediatric hearing loss provided me with challenges and a chance to meet concerned loving parents needing safe resolution and in some instances, surgery for their child.
Early detection and intervention nearly always resulted in optimum outcomes and in cases of delay, resulted in destructive changes to the child’s middle and inner ears.
On the personal side, I’ve been involved with the lives of my (now grown) daughters, leading me to participate in their school life. As a trustee at their schools (I’m a helicopter parent) Phillips Brooks School, Castilleja School in Palo Alto and finally Wesleyan University, I am keenly aware of the needs of the classroom teacher /parent environment.
Central to the success in high achieving learning environments are at a minimum, healthy set of ears. Many young students are mislabeled as slow learners or behavioral challenges when they simply can’t hear well even out of one ear.
Recent sets of studies from Harvard’s Eaton Peabody Labs implicate permanent hearing nerve damage and brain related auditory problems caused by commonly missed chronic fluid retention behind the eardrum. The KidsHearing game is the direct outcome of that shocking data. Putting hearing screening in the hands of parents and teachers allows for earlier intervention and prevention of irreversible ear disease.
Co-founder
Chief Operating Officer
Dave Miller
Father, Technologist, Optimist, and Cyclist.
Applying my engineering experience to new methods for hearing health: new ways to measure hearing, assess higher auditory function and and rehabilitate hearing loss and tinnitus.
Advisory Panel
Steven D. Rauch, M.D.
Professor and Vice Chair
for Clinical Research
Dept of Otolaryngology
Harvard Medical School
Chief, Vestibular Division
Member, Otology Division
Otolaryngology Depart
Mass Eye & Ear and
Mass General Hospital
With more than 30 years of experience in otolaryngology, Dr. Steven Rauch specializes in otology, the diagnosis, medical, and surgical management of hearing and balance disorders. A graduate of Amherst College, Dr. Rauch received his medical degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine prior to joining Mass. Eye and Ear/Harvard Medical School for his residency in otolaryngology. Upon completion of his training in 1984, Dr. Rauch joined the Department as a full-time faculty member of the otology service and is now a Professor of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Rauch’s leadership and expertise in balance disorders led to the formation of a new Vestibular Division at Mass. Eye and Ear in 2014, with Dr. Rauch serving as Division Chief. The Division brings together specialists from both otolaryngology and neurology to provide highly specialized clinical care and research initiatives with the goal of improving the lives of patients with vestibular and balance disorders.
An active participant in the otolaryngology and research communities, Dr. Rauch has served as a member of the Board of Scientific Councilors of the NIH National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and as President of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO). He is also a Past Chair of the Research Advisory Board of the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery. He is a member of the American Otological Society and the American Neurotological Society. He sits on numerous grant review, editorial, and advisory boards here in the U.S. and internationally. He is currently a Vice Chair of Academic Affairs for the Department of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical School and Chair of the Human Studies Committee at Mass. Eye and Ear.
Dr. Rauch’s clinical interests include both hearing and balance disorders. He focuses his research efforts on combined disorders of hearing and balance, particularly Ménière’s disease, autoimmune inner ear disease, sudden deafness, and migraine. Dr. Rauch has also cultivated an interest in performing arts medicine. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Liberal Arts Department at Berklee College of Music, where he teaches a course on Health and Wellness for undergraduate music students.
Hearing.Games, LLC, Tel: 650-924-1512, Address: 655 Oak Grove Avenue, #187, Menlo Park, CA 94026
Laura Tocci, Au.D.
Director of Audiology
Montefiore Medical Center
University Hospital of Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Dept of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery
Bronx, New York.
Expert Advisory Panel for Newborn Hearing Screening
NY State Department of Health
Co-site Director NIH CHEARS Study ( Conservation of Hearing, Nurses’ Health Study )
Dr. Tocci received her Bachelor of Science degree from Douglass College, Rutgers University in 1984. She earned her Masters of Science degree from Hunter College, CUNY, in 1989. She began her career at Montefiore in 1990 as a Clinical Fellow, remained on Staff and became a Senior Audiologist prior to being promoted to Director in 2004. Dr. Tocci obtained a Certificate in Bioethics and the Medical Humanities from a joint venture between Montefiore and NYU. She also obtained an Au.D. from The School of Audiology of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in 2004. She was the co-author of the “Setting the Stage for Universal Newborn Hearing Screening” chapter in the book Universal Newborn Hearing Screening, 1998, Theime Publishing. Dr. Tocci collaborated with the NYS DOH Newborn Hearing Screening Program and the National Initiative for Child Healthcare Quality from April 2008 through April 2009, and has worked to develop protocols to reduce patients lost to follow up. She was the audiology liaison for the Bronx section of the original NIH - Hispanic Community Study/SOL grant from 2008-2014. She co-authored a paper from the original SOL study on Diabetes and Hearing Loss. In 2013, she became the co-site director for the NY/NJ/CT-based participants of the NIH CHEARS (Conservation of Hearing Study, Nurses’ Health Study) study. She continues in this role, and recently completed the 2017 testing of the participants. In 2014, she produced and presented the poster, Productivity in Diagnostic Audiology: A Real-Life Look at Efficiency in a Hospital Setting, at the American Speech and Hearing Association Convention in Orlando, Florida. In 2016, she began participation in the VTS-270 study: A Phase 2b/3 Prospective, Randomized, Double-blind, Sham-Controlled Trial of VTS-270 in Subjects with Neurologic Manifestations on Niemann-Pick type C1 Disease. In 2018, she helped to create the poster, Clinical and Neurophysiological Assessments of an Infant with Acute Neurovisceral Acid Sphingomyelinase Deficiency, which was presented at the World Lysosomal Storage Disease Conference in San Diego, California.