Dr. Anaïs Rameau, a laryngologist who provides compassionate care for patients with swallowing, voice and airway disorders, has been named director of new technologies in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine, effective December 15, 2021.
The appointment recognizes Dr. Rameau’s remarkable work inventing, researching and applying new biomedical technologies to improve the diagnosis and treatment of laryngological disorders.
“Anaïs is a wonderful addition to the culture of discovery in our department, where we are fortunate to have faculty members pursuing new technologies and patents to advance patient care,” said Dr. Michael G. Stewart, chairman of the Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery at Weill Cornell Medicine. “She is a self-starter who brings an engineering mindset to medicine with a visionary ability to see new ways of solving medical problems with technology. In addition to caring for patients in her clinical practice, she has received grants, obtained patents, mentored students and built interdisciplinary collaborations with Cornell Tech and Cornell’s Ithaca campus.”
“I’m honored to receive this new title and continue multidisciplinary collaborations, combining my medical training and passion for technologies with the broad range of talent at Weill Cornell Medicine and Cornell University,” said Dr. Rameau, a laryngologist at the Sean Parker Institute for the Voice and assistant professor of otolaryngology at Weill Cornell Medicine. “My goal is to develop ethical new tools that provide patients with swallowing, voice and airway disorders with greater access to specialized care.”
About Dr. Anaïs Rameau
Dr. Rameau specializes in evaluating and treating patients with oropharyngeal and pharyngoesophageal swallowing dysfunction associated with age, dementia, movement disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, cervical spine deformities, gastro-esophageal reflux disease and head and neck cancer. In addition, she is a trained expert in managing chronic cough, voice restoration, airway rehabilitation and treatment of benign and malignant laryngeal lesions. Dr. Rameau is a diplomate of the American Board of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.
Dr. Rameau’s research focuses on developing ways to streamline diagnostic methods for laryngological and swallowing disorders using artificial intelligence. For example, she is adapting software for analyzing birdsong developed by The Cornell Lab of Ornithology to evaluate voice patterns in dementia and stroke patients to detect early swallowing dysfunction, a common problem that can lead to death from aspiration pneumonia. Dr. Rameau’s work has been funded by several grants, including an American Laryngological Voice and Research Education Grant, the Interstellar Initiative on Healthy Aging, and the Dean’s Diversity and Health Disparity Research Award and a KL2 Career Development Award from the Clinical and Translational Science Center(CTSC) at Weill Cornell Medicine.
Dr. Rameau has received several honors and awards, including the Clarence Sasaki Award from the Dysphagia Research Society in 2021 for her novel research into disparities in oropharyngeal dysphagia. She was named Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability Faculty Fellow and was selected for the Young Leaders Program of the French American Foundation in 2020. The same year, she also was among the winners of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery’s Sim Tank competition for developing a 3D-printed larynx for surgical training. Dr. Rameau won the Second Annual Weill Cornell Medicine CTSC Health Innovation Hackathon in 2018 for her innovation that uses artificial intelligence applied to surface electromyographic signals of articulatory muscles to recognize speech in individuals with limited phonation, such as those with laryngectomy or intubated in the ICU. Dr. Rameau holds a patent on the device together with her collaborators. She also has a provisional patent for a vacuum helmet that contains expelled droplets during otolaryngological and dental procedures and an artificial intelligence algorithm that automates the selection of informative frames from laryngoscopy videos for automated pathological assessment.
Dr. Rameau is a co-founder of VoiceCollab.ai, a collaboration of voice clinicians and researchers advancing the use of artificial intelligence in laryngology applications. She also serves as a technical and medical advisor for Virufy, a non-profit organization developing a free mobile phone app that screens cough patterns to detect COVID-19. Dr. Rameau frequently mentors undergraduate, medical, graduate and post-graduate students working on health technology and biomechanical engineering projects.
Dr. Rameau has co-authored more than 25 papers published in leading, peer-reviewed journals, including The Laryngoscope, Journal of Voice, Head Neck, Dysphagia and Physics of Fluids. She is an editorial board member for Auris Nasus Larynx and Ear, and the Ear, Nose & Throat Journal. She is also an article reviewer for the journals Dysphagia and The Laryngoscope. Dr. Rameau is often invited as a guest lecturer, panelist and grand rounds expert at other institutions. She has presented her work internationally, including in Japan, Israel, Canada and Dubai.
After completing an undergraduate degree in philosophy and chemistry at Cornell University in 2004 and a graduate degree in international health policy at the London School of Economics & Political Science in 2005, Dr. Rameau earned her medical degree from McGill University in 2010. Following completion of a graduate degree in history and philosophy of science and medicine at the University of Cambridge in 2011, she pursued a residency in otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at Stanford University and a fellowship in laryngology at UC Davis Health.