Robert Jackler, MD (’79) Receives 2014 BUSM Distinguished Alumnus Award

Dr. Robert Jackler is the Sewall Professor and Chair of the Department of Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery and Professor in the Departments of Neurosurgery and Surgery at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Graduating cum laude from BUSM, he completed his internship and residency in surgery at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and an otologyneurotology fellowship at the Otologic Medical Group – House Ear Institute in Los Angeles.

An otologist-neurotologist who specializes in complex ear diseases, with a special interest in tumors of the lateral and posterior cranial base, he has written numerous analytical papers derived from his microsurgical series. Dr. Jackler has authored more than 150 peer reviewed papers, 35 textbook chapters, numerous editorials, and published three books.

His long-standing collaboration with medical artist Chirstine Gralapp has produced more than 1,500 original illustrations of a wide variety of cranial base and ear microsurgical approaches. For more than 25 years he has directed a fellowship program in neurotology and skull base surgery which has trained a number of academic leaders in the field

He leads the Stanford Initiative to Cure Hearing Loss whose mission is to create biological cures for major forms of inner ear hearing loss through a research effort that is sustained, large-scale, multidisciplinary, focused, goal-oriented, and transformational (http://hearinglosscure.stanford.edu).

In 2007, Dr. Jackler and his wife Laurie founded the interdisciplinary research group SRITA (Stanford Research Into The Impact of Tobacco Advertising). SRITA conducts research on the ways the tobacco industry targets teens, women, and African Americans as well as how recently introduced products such as electronic cigarettes are marketed. While the Jackler collection of more than 20,000 original tobacco advertisements now resides in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution, SRITA maintains an annotated online digital collection of more than 14,000 tobacco advertisements for use by scholars (tobacco.stanford.edu) and offers a traveling museum exhibit.