Andy Groves

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Andy Groves joined Baylor College of Medicine in July 2008, where he is an Associate Professor in the departments of Neuroscience and Molecular and Human Genetics.

EDUCATION:
Andy Groves received his Bachelor of Science degree in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University. He received his Doctoral degree in Cellular Neurobiology from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at University College, London. In 1993, he started postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology and was recruited to the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles in 1999 to head the Section on Molecular Development.

AWARDS:
Dr Groves has received grants and awards from the National Institutes of Health, the Deafness Foundation, the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation and the Human Frontiers Science Program. In January 2001, the National Organization for Hearing Research awarded Dr Groves and his HEI colleague, Dr Neil Segil, a grant to study cell regeneration in the ear. Dr. Groves was awarded Faculty Member of the Year winner for Developmental Biology in 2011.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
Dr Groves' research is concerned with understanding how the inner ear forms in the developing embryo. This understanding may provide clues to the causes of hereditary deafness in infants and progressive hearing loss in old age.

My laboratory uses the inner ear as a model system to address fundamental questions in developmental biology and regeneration. The transformation of a simple piece of placodal epithelium into a sensory organ of extreme morphological complexity provides an opportunity to study competence, induction, pattern formation, cell-type differentiation and morphogenesis. In addition, the failure of sensory hair cells to regenerate in deafened mammals is a clinical problem that may prove tractable through an understanding of inner ear development and the role of stem cells and progenitor cells in hair cell formation.

Current projects include:

1. Molecular mechanisms of inner ear induction: The nature of competence and patterning of developmental fields

2. Testing a compartment boundary model of ear development: The application of Cre-Lox technology to the developing inner ear

3. Inner ear hair cell progenitors in development and regeneration: Progenitor and stem cell biology and its clinical applications

HOME PAGE
http://neuro.bcm.edu/groveslab/