Barbara Shinn-Cunningham joined Carnegie Mellon as the director of the Neuroscience Institute in 2018. Prior to that, she spent more than 20 years on the faculty of Boston University (first in cognitive and neural systems, and later in biomedical engineering). Her innovative work in auditory neuroscience has been recognized by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Whitaker Foundation, and the Vannevar Bush Fellows program. She has held numerous elected and appointed leadership positions in professional organizations such as the Association for Research in Otolaryngology and the Acoustical Society of America, and serves as on numerous advisory boards within both academia and industry.