Triological Society’s 2025 Honorees and Thesis Award Winners: Celebrating remarkable surgeons at COSM 2025

At this year’s Combined Otolaryngology Spring Meeting in New Orleans, the Triological Society recognized Drs. Michael Hoa, Meredith Holcomb, and Peter A. Weisskopt with presidential citations. Dr. Cherie-Ann Nathan was chosen as the 2025 Ogura Lecturer, and Dr. Fred Telischi was Guest of Honor.

Dr. Hoa

Michael Hoa, MD, earned his medical degree from Boston University School of Medicine, completed his residency in otolaryngology at Wayne State University in Detroit, completed a neurotology fellowship at the House Ear Clinic in California, and trained under Neil Segil, PhD, in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) T32-funded Hearing and Communication Neurosciences Research Training Program at the University of Southern California. He later moved to the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where he has crafted a career as a surgeon-scientist, characterizing the role of the stria vascularis in hearing loss and adapting single-nucleus transcriptome approaches for the adult mouse and human inner ear.

Dr. Hoa’s clinical research program at the NIDCD has focused on developing a better understanding of Ménière’s disease and identifying novel and repurposable treatments for hearing loss in this setting. He has steadily risen to the rank of professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine in the department of otolaryngology, where he serves as both the director of the cochlear implant program and director of research, in addition to holding administrative roles and practicing the breadth and depth of neurotology/otology. Nationally, Dr. Hoa chairs the research committee for the American Cochlear Implant Alliance (ACIA) and that of the American Neurotology Society’s (ANS) diversity and inclusion committee, where he has organized and implemented an annual outreach event to high schoolers in the context of the national American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNSF) meeting starting in Nashville in 2023.

Dr. Holcomb

Meredith Holcomb, AuD, CCC-A, earned her AuD from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, N.C., and worked at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston before joining the University of Miami department of otolaryngology, where she is an associate professor and the director of the hearing implant program. She has two decades of experience as a cochlear implant audiologist, specializing in both pediatric and adult patients.

Dr. Holcomb is a current member of the Joint Committee on Infant Hearing and a faculty member for the Institute for Cochlear Implant Training courses. She serves as a consultant for cochlear implant companies such as Cochlear Americas, Advanced Bionics, MED-EL, Akouos, and Hemideina. She is a past chair of the ACIA. Dr. Holcomb demonstrates a strong commitment to education, mentorship, and clinical research. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and is regularly invited to speak at national and international conferences on cochlear implantation candidacy, outcomes, and clinical efficiency.