Joy A. Franco

Graduate Student in Mechanical Engineering
Advisor: Beth Pruitt
Affiliation:
EPFL Exchange Scholars

Joy Franco is in the first year of her PhD program in Mechanical Engineering and will complete her MS, also in Mechanical Engineering, in June of 2017. Her dissertation research will focus on understanding the mechano-sensitive ion channels that allow humans to detect and respond to mechanical stimuli, and how dysfunction of these channels results in deafness. She is mentored by her dissertation advisor Beth Pruitt, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and her co-mentor Anthony Ricci in the Department of Otolaryngology. Her post-PhD career goal is to conduct research in the fields of mechanobiology and human disease.

Related Projects

Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute
EPFL-Stanford Exchange
2017
High-speed nanomechanical probing of auditory mechano-sensitive cells

Our ability to detect and interpret sounds relies on specialized sensory cells within the snail-shaped hearing organ of the inner ear—the cochlea. These hair cells sense physical movement and then convert that mechanical stimulus into a biological signal that we perceive as sound. These mechano-sensory cells perform this task within microseconds and can do so for sub-nanomechanical stimuli.