Dr. Gabriel Corfas is the Director of Kresge Hearing Research Institute and serves as the Associate Chair of Research, Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. Dr. Corfas received an M.Sc. in biological sciences from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and a Ph.D. in neurobiology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He did postdoctoral training in the laboratory of Dr. Gerald Fischbach, first at Washington University and then at Harvard Medical School (HMS). He then joined the HMS faculty and established his independent laboratory at Boston Children’s Hospital. Before joining the faculty of the University of Michigan and becoming the director of the Kresge Hearing Research Institute in 2014, he was a professor in the departments of neurology and otology & laryngology at HMS and director of basic research in otolaryngology at Boston Children’s Hospital.
The Corfas Laboratory is interested in understanding the roles that interactions between neurons and glia-the two fundamental cell types of the nervous system-play in nervous system development, function and maintenance and in defining the molecular signals that orchestrate these interactions. To this end, the lab employs molecular and cellular biological techniques as well as uses genetically modified mice. Some of the work in the Corfas lab is focused on balance disorders.