Neonatologist, audiologist, neurobiologist join faculty

The Medical Center is proud to announce the following additions to its faculty and leadership staff:

Pradeep Alur, M.D.

Alur

Dr. Pradeep Alur, a clinical associate professor at the Penn State College of Medicine and a neonatologist at York Hospital in Pennsylvania, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an associate professor of pediatrics.

After receiving his M.B.B.S. from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India, in 1983, Alur had a one-year rotating internship at Gandhi Hospital, Hyderabad. He completed pediatric residency training in 1988 at Gandhi Medical College, Osmania University, and had additional pediatric residency training from 1993-96 at Case Western Reserve University, Metro Health Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio. He was chief resident in pediatrics from 1996-97 and had fellowship training in neonatology from 1997-2000 at Metro Health Medical Center.

Alur joined the Department of Neonatology faculty at the National University of Singapore in 2000 as an assistant professor of pediatrics and, two years later, became medical director of the NICU and the PICU at the Guam Memorial Hospital Authority. In 2003, he joined Provena Covenant Medical Center, Urbana Champaign, Illinois, as its ICU medical director, and in 2006, moved to the Penn State College of Medicine.

An invited speaker at numerous medical conferences nationally, Alur has authored or coauthored 28 articles in peer-reviewed publications internationally and eight invited publications and has served as a reviewer for the journals Pediatrics and Applied Clinical Informatics. He has instituted numerous quality improvement projects and has given several quality improvement presentations nationally.

Victoria Kivlan, Au.D.

Kivlan

Dr. Victoria Kivlan, a pediatric audiologist at Driscoll Children's Hospital, Corpus Christi, Texas, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of otolaryngology.

After receiving her B.A. in psychology from the Mississippi University for Women, Columbus, in 2008, Kivlan earned her Au.D. in 2015 at Idaho State University, Pocatello. While a Doctor of Audiology candidate, she was an intern audiologist at Children's Hospital, New Orleans, and at four facilities in Boise, Idaho: Elks Hearing and Balance, the Boise School District, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the House of Hearing. She had a pediatric audiology clinical fellowship from 2014-15 at the University of Alabama Birmingham Civitan-Sparks Clinics before joining Driscoll Children's Hospital.

A member of five national honor societies, including Golden Key, Phi Kappa Phi, Mortar Board, Psi Chi and Phi Theta Kappa, Kivlan has served as president of the Student Academy of Audiology and co-chair of the Special Olympics and Healthy Hearing. She specializes in pediatric cochlear implants and electrophysiological measures of hearing. Her research interests include electrically evoked auditory brainstem responses in the pediatric population and association of Congenital Cytomegalovirus and hearing loss in children.

Bradley J. Walters, Ph.D.

Dr. Bradley J. Walters, a recent postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Developmental Neurobiology at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, has joined the Medical Center faculty as an assistant professor of neurobiology and anatomical sciences.

After receiving his B.S. in pre-medicine from Pennsylvania State University, State College, in 2001, Walters earned his Ph.D. in integrative biology and neuroscience at Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 2010. He joined St. Jude later that year.

The author or coauthor of 12 articles in peer-reviewed professional publications and one patent, Walters has given more than one dozen scientific presentations nationally. An active member of several professional organizations, including the Society for Neuroscience, the Society for Developmental Biology, the Association for Research in Otolaryngology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, his research interests include the study of development and regeneration in the inner ear and other tissues of the nervous system and the translation of key findings to the rehabilitation of sensorineural hearing loss and other neurodegenerative conditions.