Affiliation: Stanford School of Medicine

Dr. Nesrine Benkafadar obtained her PharmD from the University of Constantine in Algeria. She then joined the Institute for Neurosciences of Montpellier in France, where she completed a master’s degree in Industrial Pharmacy and obtained her PhD in Biology and Health. She mainly worked on establishing a functional interaction between oxidative stress, DNA damage and cochlear cell aging. From there, she conducted postdoctoral research in Dr. Stefan Heller’s lab at Stanford University. Her current research is focused on studying the early regenerative triggers in damaged avian cochlea with the overarching goal to characterize the series of events that trigger and execute cochlear hair cell regeneration. Her ultimate goal is to investigate key trigger genes to induce adult mammalian supporting cells in damaged cochlea to re-enter the cell cycle towards hair cell regeneration.