Karen Steel

Karen Penelope Steel is a British scientist who studies the genetics of deafness, using the mouse as a model to identify the genes involved and to understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms involved. She is Professor of Sensory Function at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, King's College London. Previously she was Principal Investigator of the Genetics of Deafness research programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

Together with Christine Petit, Steel won the Royal Society Brain Prize 2012, for pioneering work on the genetics of hearing and deafness.

Education Steel obtained her first degree from Leeds University. She then received her PhD from University College London for her investigatory work into the inner ear in several deaf mouse mutants. She set up the mouse genetics and deafness research programme at the newly established MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham. Following a second postdoc in Munich, she returned to Nottingham to lead mouse genetics research. This led to Steel developing a screening technique, a triaging process, that allowed for the characterisation of mutant mice that have hearing and imbalance issues. This led to ability to find and characterise the specific genes involved in these issues, with these issues being caused by altered hair cells or auditory parts. She also looks for specific mutated genes that are known to contribute and lead to hearing loss, allowing her to target genes that could be potentially targeted in treatments for progressive hearing loss. As of 2014, Steel and her team has found genes involved in progressive hearing loss and has moved forward in identifying the various pathways that these genes are a part of.

Awards and honours Recipient of the Kresge-Mirmelstein prize for excellence in hearing research, New Orleans, 1998 Elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, London, 2004 Elected Council member of Association for Research in Otolaryngology (2004–2008) Elected President of International Mammalian Genome Society (2007–2012) Edith Whetnall lecturer, Section of Otology of the Royal Society of Medicine, London, 2008 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society, London, 2009 Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize, 2012

The asteroid 24734 Kareness was named after Steel by its discoverer, Steel's brother.