American Cochlear Implant Alliance

John Niparko Memorial Lecturer for CI2027 announced

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The American Cochlear Implant Alliance is proud to announce that Dr. Monita Chatterjee, Professor in the Roxelyn and Richard Pepper Department of Communication Sciences & Disorders at Northwestern University, has been selected as the John Niparko Memorial Lecturer for CI2027.

Dr. Chatterjee will deliver the conference keynote in San Diego this May — a moment that will honor Dr. Niparko's enduring legacy and sharing a frontier of cochlear implant research that is the center of human connection.
Dr. Chatterjee has studied auditory and speech perception in cochlear implant users since 1995, bringing to the field a combination of engineering precision and neuroscience. Her training spans electrical engineering at Jadavpur University in Kolkata, India; a PhD in Neuroscience from Syracuse University; and postdoctoral work with Dr. Robert V. Shannon at the House Ear Institute. She has led NIH-funded labs at the House Ear Institute, the University of Maryland, and Boys Town National Research Hospital before joining Northwestern, where she directs the Auditory Prostheses & Perception Laboratory.
Beyond her research, Dr. Chatterjee is the founder of the BIPOC-CSD Network, a mentoring network for students, researchers, clinicians, engineers and others working in Communication Sciences and Disorders who identify as Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. Her commitment to broadening access and representation in the field reflects values that Dr. Niparko himself embodied throughout his career.

CI2027 San Diego: Conference on Cochlear Implants will be held May 12–15, 2027, at the Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego. The conference will bring together audiologists, physicians, speech-language pathologists, psychologists, scientists, engineers, educators, students, and other professionals involved in cochlear implantation to share the latest multidisciplinary research, clinical advances, and innovations in the field. Conference registration opens in December 2026, with discounted rates available for ACI Alliance members and early bird registrants. Conference details can be found at https://ci2027sandiego.org/