Nancy Young

Background

About Nancy Young

Dr. Young is a board certified surgeon who has performed more than cochlear implantations. She is a Fellow of the Knowles Hearing Center and a member of the Institute for Innovations in Developmental Sciences of Northwestern University. She is a President-elect of the Council (leadership body) of the American Otological Society, the second oldest medical society in the US. She is a board member of the Hearing Health Foundation, a not-for-profit supporting hearing loss research, and a member of the Scientific Council for Childhood Hearing with The Oberkotter Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to improving outcomes for deaf and hard of hearing children. For many years she served on the U.S. advisory boards of the three largest cochlear implant manufacturers. Dr. Young founded the cochlear implant program at the Lurie Children's Hospital after completing a fellowship in neurotology (advanced ear surgery). Since she implanted the first child in the city of Chicago the program has grown to be one of the largest in the US. In 2022, she was awarded an NIH/NIDCD grant to investigate the relationship between brain structure and function to predict cochlear implant outcomes using AI. The goal of this research is to develop custom therapies to maximize hearing and communication after implantation. This multicenter study is a collaboration with Patrick Wong, PhD, former NU faculty member and Director the Brain and Mind Institute of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She also served as Primary Investigator of a recently concluded multi-center FDA clinical trial to broaden pediatric indications for the MED-EL Synchrony Cochlear Implant System. Dr. Young was honored to give the 2023 Howard P. House, MD Memorial Lecture For Advances in Otology at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery. She was also honored to give the 2019 William House Memorial Lecture at the 54th meeting of the American Neurotology Society. Dr. Young is co-editor, with Karen Iler Kirk, of the text book Pediatric Cochlear Implantation - Learning and the Brain. The 2024 second edition is available: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-67188-3. She is passionate about the importance of hearing to enable children, including those with developmental and cognitive disabilities, to achieve their full potential for language and social engagement.