Thesis Submissio Congratulations: Well done Alice Yu, on your Biomedical Science thesis submission “Polarisation-sensitive optical coherence tomography of the sheep round window”
Thesis Submission Congratulations: Well done, Alice Yu, on your Biomedical Science thesis submission on the use of optical coherence tomography of the sheep round window!
We’re delighted to celebrate another thesis submission and a major milestone from our research group: congratulations to Alice Yu on submitting her Biomedical Science thesis about Optical coherence tomography of the sheep round window. Alice’s project was jointly supervised by Haruna and Dr Cushla McGoverin (Biophotonics Lab, Physics), and it’s fair to say this was a genuinely challenging, cross-disciplinary piece of work that she tackled with real persistence and skill!
Alice’s thesis sat right at the intersection of inner-ear biology and advanced optical imaging. She had to get comfortable with the physics foundations behind the imaging approach, the Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). She had not only learned how to operate and troubleshoot specialised equipment to collect high-quality images, but also a lot of the heavy lifting afterwards in extracting data using MATLAB coding, working through quantitative analysis, and interpreting what the outputs may mean in a biologically meaningful way. All of that came alongside learning the lab workflow and building a solid understanding of inner-ear anatomy. It was a steep learning curve, and Alice handled it with a level of focus and independence we are all very proud of.
At the heart of the research is a practical problem that we face for the inner ear; we still don’t have enough drug-based therapies for sensorineural hearing loss, and one promising route is delivering treatments via the middle ear (intratympanic delivery). A key hurdle is the round window membrane, which acts as a gateway, and sometimes a barrier, for drugs getting into the inner ear. Alice explored whether a sophisticated imaging method, variations of optical coherence tomography (OCT), could help us see the round window membrane’s internal structure in a way that could eventually support in vivo assessment. In her work, PS-OCT was able to non-destructively delineate layers of the round window membrane and explore how an overlying mucosal layer may (or may not) influence the overall structural organisation.
This kind of foundational imaging work helps move the field toward better understanding why treatments can vary so much between individuals, and what features might be important to measure in real time.
Congratulations, Alice, & Best wishes with your new endeavour!
We’re also delighted to share Alice’s next step: Alice has now started the Master of Audiology at the University of Auckland, beginning the first year of the two-year clinical degree to become a clinical audiologist. Hearing loss is something Alice has a personal interest in and a genuine mission for, so it’s wonderful news (for us and for the field) that she’s staying in the hearing space. And with another thesis ahead as part of her training, who knows, we may well see her back in research with us again.
Alice, congratulations again on your submission, and best wishes for an inspiring start to audiology training. We’re cheering you on.