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Karen Steel

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Name
  
Karen Steel

Karen Steel wwwneurosciencecamacukuploadedFilessmkps1p

Relatives
  
Duncan Steel (brother) Ashley Steel (sister)

Employer
  
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute

Occupation
  
Principal investigator

Karen steele


Karen Penelope Steel FRS FMedSci is a British scientist who studies the genetics of deafness, using the mouse as a model to identify the genes involved and to understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms involved. She is Professor of Sensory Function at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, King's College London. Previously she was Principal Investigator of the Genetics of Deafness research programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Contents

Karen Steel wwwsangeracuksitesdefaultfilesApr2016kstee

She had a leading role in the collaboration that uncovered Myo7a, the first gene to be implicated in deafness in mice and in humans. Most recently, she led the discovery of Mir-96 microRNA that is implicated in progressive hearing loss in mice and humans.

Together with Professor Christine Petit, Steel won the Royal Society Brain Prize 2012, for pioneering work on the genetics of hearing and deafness.

Education

Steel obtained her first degree from Leeds University. She then received her PhD from University College London for her investigatory work into the inner ear in several deaf mouse mutants. She set up the mouse genetics and deafness research programme at the newly established MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham. Following a second postdoc in Munich, she returned to Nottingham to lead mouse genetics research.

Research

Steel studies the genetics behind deafness, mainly focusing on the genetics of mice in order to identify the genes involved and to understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms involved with being deaf. With her group, she has published phenotypic descriptions of over 80 different mouse mutants.

Currently, her research has focused on the progressive loss of auditory functions. She uses the mouse models in order to diagram the timeline of auditory loss in humans.

Awards and honours

  • Recipient of the Kresge-Mirmelstein prize for excellence in hearing research, New Orleans, 1998
  • Elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, London, 2004
  • Elected Council member of Association for Research in Otolaryngology (2004-2008)
  • Elected President of International Mammalian Genome Society (2007-2012)
  • Edith Whetnall lecturer, Section of Otology of the Royal Society of Medicine, London, 2008
  • Elected Fellow of the Royal Society, London, 2009
  • Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize, 2012
  • Award of Merit, Association for Research in Otolaryngology, to be presented in Baltimore, Feb 2013

    • The asteroid 24734 Kareness was named after Steel by its discoverer, Steel's brother, Duncan Steel.

    References

    Karen Steel Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA