Alexander Chern’s (he/him) favorite composer is Beethoven — which, he admits, is a bit on the nose. Just as the composer did, the otolaryngologist has hearing loss and cares deeply about music — though he is far less ill-tempered.
The son of Taiwanese immigrants, Chern got a glimpse of his future at an early age when doctors identified a hearing loss. His mother thought that playing music could help his hearing and signed him up for violin lessons, igniting what has become a lifelong passion (and good training for a surgeon’s dexterous fingers).
Chern’s interest in studying music perception is more recent. While attending medical school at Vanderbilt University, he was walking home from the gym when a car plowed into him at 50mph, putting him into a two-week coma. The ensuing months of recovery afforded Chern ample time to think about his life and research. He spent countless hours rediscovering the classical music he had played and listened to as a kid. The experience reoriented him and, soon thereafter, Chern started working in Vanderbilt’s Music Cognition Lab, studying how musical rhythms can improve language in kids.
After Vanderbilt, Chern moved to New York City for the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s Otolaryngology Residency Program, during which time he won several awards for his teaching and publications. Now a Neurotology & Skull Base Surgery Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, Chern remains laser-focused on understanding how music affects a person’s health and behavior, especially for people with hearing loss. He wants to see if his mother’s hypothesis is true for more than just him.
— Timmy Broderick
