William E. Brownell, Ph.D. is a professor in the Bobby R. Alford Department of Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, where he is the head of the Cochlear Biophysics Laboratory and is also the Jake and Nina Kamin Chair. He is a biophysicist who studies the mechanics of mammalian hearing. He has earned a B.S. in Physics, at the University of Chicago in 1968, and a Ph.D., at the University of Chicago in 1973.