munity Medical Center in Missoula, ….
munity Medical Center in Missoula, and has interest in a career helping elderly people with speech therapy.
“I really want to work with the adult population, specifically with more elderly people,” Garner said. “That’s also why this BEAR Lab was so appealing to me because we look at how hearing ages. This gives me a neat perspective on that.”
Garner and the other undergraduate student assistants have spent the fall semester setting up the BEAR Lab and testing the equipment on each other. Starting next year, Anoop plans to bring in real patients to the lab.
Anoop intends to partner with the Rocky Mountain Ear, Nose and Throat Center to have their patients visit the BEAR Lab for testing. He is also partnering with UM’s physical therapy program to test patients who suffered concussions to see how their hearing and balance is affected.
“In individuals with concussions, there is a strong possibility that both hearing and balance mechanisms are affected due to their physical closeness and shared neural connections,” Anoop said.
Anoop earned a bachelor’s degree in speech and hearing and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in audiology from the All India Institute of Speech and Hearing in Mysuru, India. He conducted postdoctoral research at Northwestern University before joining UM in July 2024.
He found his passion for audiology on his second day of college in India, where he met with a child who could not speak. He discovered the child had hearing problems that lead to an inability to talk.
“That triggered my interest,” Anoop said. “Someone was testing a child who could not speak at all. I was curious why that was happening. It turns out a child who cannot hear cannot speak. That stuck with me.”
Anoop is happy to share his expertise with the UM community as the only dedicated audiology professor in UM’s speech language pathology program. He’s also enjoyed his time in Montana, which has been a much different experience than his upbringing in India.
“I didn’t know what to expect when I came to Montana because I come from a country where my city’s population is more than the whole state of Montana,” Anoop said. “I had no expectations and no idea how Montana would be. The people here have been extraordinary.”
