Speakers

Dr Victor Bray Associate Professor, Salus University Osborne College of Audiology

Dr Victor Bray has a 40-year career in health care, including provision of clinical services, applied research in product development and clinical trials, and senior administration in industry and academia, all of which have been supported with extensive presentations and publications.

He is currently an Associate Professor and former Dean of Salus University Osborne College of Audiology. His research activities include evaluating hearing instrument technologies, the co-management of comorbidities in audiological medicine, and the role of audiology doctoral-degree education in the audiology professional transition process. His most recent publications are on Comorbidities in the Audiology Patient; Depression, Hearing Loss, and Hearing Aids; and Diabetes and Hearing and Balance Disorders. His advocacy activities are in support of the Medicare Audiologist Access and Services Act of 2019 (H.R. 4056).

Dr Jonette Owen Assistant Dean for the Practice and Assessment of Audiological Medicine, Salus University

As Assistant Dean for Practice and Assessment of Audiologic Medicine at Salus University, Osborne College of Audiology, Dr Owen oversees the four-year clinical education of Au.D students in one of the largest Au.D programs in the United States. Dr Owen has been on the Board of Examiners for the State of Pennsylvania and is the immediate past Chair. She served as a working group subject matter expert in the development of the CH-AP preceptor training program currently offered by the American Board of Audiology. Dr Owen serves the American Academy of Audiology as a member of the Guidelines and Strategic Documents Committee.

Dr Owen obtained her Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Speech Pathology & Audiology from Loyola College Maryland, a Master of Science (MS) in Audiology from Towson State University and her doctorate in Audiology (Au.D) from Salus University (formerly the Pennsylvania College of Optometry School of Audiology). Dr Owen is a member of the Audiology Honor Society. In 2017 Dr Owen is a Distinguished Practitioner and Fellow of the National Academies of Practice.

Dr Piers Dawes Macquarie University and University of Manchester

Piers Dawes studied speech and hearing science at Curtin University in Western Australia and holds a doctorate in experimental psychology from Oxford University. He held academic posts at the Universities of York and Manchester and is currently an Associate Professor in Audiology at the Australian Hearing Hub in Sydney. Dr Dawes’s research concerns i) understanding causes and impacts of hearing impairment, particularly in the context of multimorbidity in older age, ii) prevention and treatment of hearing impairment, and iii) hearing service development and evaluation.

Dr Dawes was a recipient of a US-UK Fulbright award and was awarded the British Society of Audiology’ TS Littler prize for services to audiology. Dr Dawes was the founding chair of the British Society of Audiology’s special interest group for cognition in hearing, which promotes research and raising awareness of new developments on cognitive issues in hearing science, assessment and intervention. Dr Dawes is joint PI for “Ears, Eyes and Mind: The “SENSE-Cog Project” to improve mental well-being for elderly Europeans with sensory impairment”, a €6.2 million EU Horizon 2020 project. Dr Dawes was a lead investigator for the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing and heads a consortium of international researchers (including Nottingham Biomedical Research Unit in Hearing, Leeds University, Wisconsin University, University College London and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre) in analyzing hearing and tinnitus data from the UK Biobank resource (N=500,000 UK adults).