Scientific advances at our Center depend on specialized, computer-controlled experimental facilities for auditory research that are powerful and flexible enough to allow the efficient implementation of new paradigms. A major role of the Engineering Core is to design and maintain such specialized dataacquisition systems (Aim 1). This complex task involves selecting commercial instruments that are compatible with each other, installing these instruments, writing special software allowing them to be flexibly controlled by users, maintaining them, and upgrading them. Core Engineers also design and build electronic, acoustic and mechanical devices that are not commercially available (e.g. acoustic systems) to meet the constantly evolving requirements of physiological experiments (Aim 2). By web publishing of technical accomplishments, Core Engineers will share selected examples of our software and hardware solutions with the greater scientific community (Aim 3). The function of the Engineering Core is to facilitate both current research projects and new initiatives by taking advantage of emerging and mature technologies. The Engineering Core makes it possible for individual investigators to use sophisticated (or complicated) techniques that they would otherwise not be able to develop or use. By providing shared experimental facilities, the Engineering Core also encourages collaborative projects among the investigators using these facilities, and makes these facilities available to other NIH-funded investigators, external to the Center, who share an interest in hearing and deafness. Finally, the Engineering Core makes the scientific research of the Center more efficient by providing a knowledge bank that enables experimenters to be aware of and use techniques developed by another experimenter. In short, the Engineering Core increases the quantity and quality of the Center's scientific output, allowing us to better attack new issues in hearing and deafness.
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