2 August 2006

Geelong man receives bionic ear mantle

Professor Rob Shepherd has been appointed as Director to Australia’s Bionic Ear Institute, following in the footsteps of Professor Graeme Clark, the inventor of the bionic ear.

His appointment follows a global search for the right person. Portland-born, Geelong-education—the local man shone through.

More than 75,000 people around the world have gained the ability to understand spoken language with the help of Australia’s bionic ear. And the device has captured 70% of the global market for cochlear implants.

Rob Shepherd is a man who follows his passions. In the mid-70s that meant taking the then-unusual step of convincing Deakin University to let him mix biology, physiology and electron microscopy into his physics degree. Now, using that background, he will be leading Melbourne’s multidisciplinary Bionic Ear Institute into the future.

“I am honoured to be presented with the opportunity to lead such a prestigious organisation into new and exciting areas of medical bionics while maintaining cutting edge hearing research into improving the bionic ear,” says Shepherd.

His introduction to area, he says, “came out of left field.” Under the terms of a Victorian Government scholarship to university, he needed to complete two years of industrial experience before going into teaching. He saw an advertisement in the paper for someone to operate an electron microscope to help with the development of a medical device, the cochlear implant. Turning to his wife, he said, “They’ve written my job description.”

After the two years were up, he went into teaching, and the bionic ear research reached the stage where the first two implants were made. These were so successful, that the Australian Government decided to invest in the commercialisation of the device, and Shepherd started receiving phone calls from Graeme Clark. “Come back, we need you.” His job was ensuring the long-term safety of the implants.

Today, Shepherd’s research group is studying what happens at the cellular level with the onset of deafness. The researchers have uncovered several therapeutic compounds that can help preserve and protect fragile auditory cells, and they are working at developing technology for delivering these drugs in ways that can improve the quality of hearing.

“We are developing new therapeutic techniques to deliver these drugs into the inner ear to rescue auditory neurones using procedures that can be used in association with cochlear implants or bionic ears.”

Shepherd’s group has also become interested in how flexible the brain is—in particular, how the brain responds to, and copes with, the input from a newly implanted hearing device. This mix of consolidating the core area of interest of the cochlear implant with the cutting edge of nerve cell research matches how Shepherd sees the future of the Bionic Ear Institute.

“With more than 100,000 people implanted with cochlear devices, the bionic ear is now a mature technology. But there is still much work to do And if the Institute is to remain successful, it must expand into other areas. So we will be applying our knowledge to develop other medical bionic devices, such as the bionic eye. And we will also be working with polymer chemists on how to release nerve growth factors in a controlled manner. This has huge implications for helping, for instance, to regrow the spinal cord or peripheral nerve following injury.”

Some of these projects—such as developing intelligent ways of releasing antibacterial compounds from implants—will be ready to undergo clinical trials within the next five years, Shepherd says. Others, such as the bionic eye, may take 15 to 20 years.

In his spare time, Rob Shepherd reverts to the Geelong boy, he once was. “I’m not very good, but I have a passion for surfing.” He rides his bike to work, when he can. And he goes bushwalking and occasionally cross-country skiing.