Awards/Recognitions/Lectures:

2005-2006: NRSA Individual Postdoctoral F32 Fellowship LSUHSC

2003-2005: NRSA Individual Postdoctoral F32 Fellowship LSUHSC

1998: Best Student Paper; 16th International Congress on Acoustics and the 135th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America. Seattle, WA. USA

1995- 2000: NIMH integrative training grant fellowship, Cornell University   

Research Interest: Using the methodologies of psychophysics and neurophysiology, our research explores the underlying neural mechanisms mediating sensory acuity (i.e., stimulus detection and discrimination).

Bio: Dr. Farris completed his undergraduate and Masters degrees in Biology at the University of Mississippi (1992, 1994). For his masters degree he conducted research at the National Center for Physical Acoustics. Using a comparative approach, that work discovered the first evidence for hearing in certain insects and showed that insect auditory systems process certain sounds like humans do.
  For his PhD in Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University (2000), Dr. Farris received a fellowship from the National Institute of Mental Health to continue research using insects as comparative models for the mechanisms of audition, including across channel processing, loudness perception, temporal integration and intensity discrimination. Insect ears are presently being used as models for engineering new, more effective hearing aid products. Dr. Farris continues collaboration on such small eared systems in hopes of developing such therapeutic devices.
  Dr. Farris was a post-doctoral fellow in Integrative Biology at the University of Texas-Austin (2000-2002), where research examined the mechanisms of complex auditory processing in a unique clade of frogs. Few animals use complex speech-like communication signals, making most animal systems poor models for elucidating neural correlates of speech perception. The calls of Tungara frogs, however, are acoustically similar to human consonants and vowels. Research showed that complex processing such as auditory grouping and syntax are important in this system, suggesting that these frogs will make an excellent model system for studying speech processing and its pathologies.
  Dr. Farris returned to New Orleans in 2002, as a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Neuroscience, LSUHSC (2002-2006). Research for this fellowship focused on the mechanisms of hair cell mechano-electric transduction. In particular, using patch-clamping techniques, research investigated the pharmacological identity of the transduction channeland  the role of endolymph in producing the set point of hair cells and the role of calcium loading in hair cell stereocilia in producing sensitivity loss and threshold shifts. This research continues presently at LSUHSC, as he was promoted to Assistant Professor-Research (2006).