Charles I. Berlin, PhD, retired on 9/1/02 as Professor of Otorhinolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, and Physiology, and Director of the world-renowned Kresge Hearing Research Laboratory at LSU Medical School in New Orleans. He was also a practicing licensed audiologist who saw patients weekly in the audiology clinic he directed which was selected by Family Circle magazine in 1987 as the Best Place in the United States for Hearing Problems. He has been called the "Teacher's Teacher" and succeeds in making complicated auditory concepts accessible to parents, teachers, hearing aid specialists, as well as his Audiology and Physician students.
He is the recipient of the American Academy of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery's highest award, the Presidential Citation; the recipient of the Honors of the Association as well as the Frank J. Kleffner Award for Lifetime Clinical Achievement from the American Speech Language and Hearing Association; and the recipient of the Lifetime Career Research Award from the American Academy of Audiology as well as the 2002 Wernick Award from the Academy of Dispensing Audiologists.
He was a founding Member of the Advisory Board to the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, and the recipient of the James P. Snow MD Award from SHHH and the prestigious Robert J. Ruben MD Award from the Society of Ear Nose and Throat Advances in Children.
He is also the first Audiologist and Hearing Scientist to have an Academic Chair named after him. On August 23, 2004 the Louisiana Board of Regents inaugurated the $1 Million Charles I. Berlin Ph.D. Chair in Molecular and Genetic Hearing Science. Berlin’s colleagues and friends, as well as grateful patients and their parents had donated $600,000 to the LSUHSC Foundation in Berlin’s name, and the Regents matched it with $400,000 to complete the $1Million Corpus. A National search beginning shortly for a highly funded and well-respected basic scientist to fill this Chair.
