2004 Education Award in Neuroscience

Dr. Ronald R. Hoy 

Dr. Ronald R. Hoy is the David and Dorothy Merksamer Professor of Biology and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University. He received his PhD in Biological Sciences from Stanford University in 1968 and joined the faculty at Cornell in 1973. He has received numerous honors and awards for outstanding performance in both his research and teaching. In 2002, he was named Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor as one of 20 awardees from a competition of 180 nominees to develop new approaches to undergraduate science education. He has given over 160 invited seminars, colloquia, and symposium lectures throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He has over 200 publications and has served on many federal grant review panels. More than three dozen pre- and postdoctoral trainees have worked in his laboratory. 

Dr. Hoy’s research focuses on how the insect nervous system is organized to process auditory information and transform it into specific behavioral acts. His approach combines neurobiological and ethological methodologies. His findings have implications not only for understanding the neuromechanical bases of sound localization, but may provide a model for tiny, purely mechano-electronic acoustic transducers that are inherently highly sensitive to sound direction and that are based on nano-fabrication technology.