my personal interests are wide and varied. i used to be an avid cellist; for many, many years I played in various chamber orchestras and smaller formations, such a string quartets, piano quartets, and piano trios. more recently, i haven't practiced much. i'm afraid i won't like the way it sounds if i gave it another try!

in california i used to run regularly with the world's coolest track club: the [fluffy bunny track club] in santa monica, ca. you can check out my [running page] for more details. we just recently moved to indiana and my running is far more casual these days.

prior to grad school, i was sailing quite competitively in europe and on the u.s. east coast. time's rather scarce these days, but i've been planning to get back into some dinghy sailing. click [here] to go to the sailing page of my old website.

click [here] to see some pictures of me, my wife paja, our two children, sorin (march 11, 2007) and caelan (21 february 2009), and some of our close friends.

sorin and caelan both have a genetic disorder commonly known as connexin 26, the most frequent form of congenital hearing loss (among known causes). paja and i happen to be carriers of this recessive condition, even though neither of us has a known family history of hearing loss. this is important to keep in mind, particularly for parents who live in states or countries with no mandatory hearing tests at birth!

sorin's hearing impairment was diagnosed within 6 weeks of birth. since he is afflicted by profound sensori-neural hearing loss, he wears bilateral cochlear implants (nucleus freedom). a cochlear implant is a medical device implanted in the cochlea (inner ear); it restores the ability to hear electronically and allows sorin to develop virtually normal speech and language and to be educationally mainstreamed.

caelan was diagnosed in utero. he too is profoundly deaf. after wearing sumo dm hearing aids (which he "inherited" from sorin) for 9 months, he was implanted bilaterally on december 8, 2009 at children's memorial hospital in chicago (sorin was implanted at the house ear institute in los angeles). he received the recently released nuclues 5 device (looks very sharp!).

if you are a parent or individual confronted with hearing impairment, feel free to contact us by email. if our experience and knowledge can be of any use or comfort, we're more than happy to share it in more detail. keep in mind, however, that paja and i are not medical experts by any stretch of the imagination.