Isabel Varela-Nieto, group leader of U761 CIBERER unit at Alberto Sols Biomedical Research Institute (CSIC-UAM), has been awarded with Morgagni medal for her professional career in the study of inner ear and hearing loss. Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682 - 1771), doctor of Medicine and Philosophy, and professor at the University of Padua for more than 50 years, is considered the father of modern pathological anatomy.
Professor Varela-Nieto has been dedicated for last 30 years to the study of the molecular basis of auditory function and the pathophysiology of hearing loss, combining development studies in chicken embryos and in vivo assays with genetically modified mice. In recent years she has focused her research on rare hearing loss, both in animal models and in patients, in collaboration with clinicians at La Paz Hospital. She received the award from the Rector of the University of Padua, in a public ceremony that took place in the the Aula Magna of that University, during the celebration of the 56th Symposium and Inner Ear Biology Workshop (September 12-15, 2019).