Sid Khosla, MD, professor and vice chair for research in the UC College of Medicine Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, died unexpectedly Dec. 13. He was 60 years old.
Khosla was nationally admired for his expertise in vocal cord and airway reconstruction. The first fellowship-trained laryngologist in the Cincinnati region, Khosla grew the UC Health Performance and Professional Voice Center into a premier program treating and assisting people who use their voice professionally, including performers from the Cincinnati Opera, UC College-Conservatory of Music, the Cincinnati Symphony and many performing artists traveling through the Cincinnati area.
Colleagues recalled Khosla's significant impact on the Department of Otolaryngology and his prowess in patient care and research. They point to his training in engineering as the basis for how he investigated the source of sound and how to repair vocal deficits. He was, they say, someone who inspired those around him, was a lover of the arts-especially vocal performance-and was committed to the mental and emotional wellbeing of students and faculty.
Khosla received his medical degree in 1991 from the Bowman Gray School of Medicine at Wake Forest University. He completed his internship in general surgery, a yearlong research residency, an otolaryngology residency and a fellowship in laryngology and voice disorders at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
He was a respected leader in voice, vocal cord and swallowing disorders research. During his career he received six R01 grants from the National Institutes of Health and more than $12 million in total research funding. With an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master's in bioengineering from the University of California, San Diego, Khosla approached voice problems as both an engineer and a physician. In his research, he teamed with Ephraim Gutmark, PhD, an expert in jet noise and professor of aerospace engineering at the UC College of Engineering and Applied Science, to conduct research on how air flow affects the voice.
"I was looking for collaboration with the medical side of UC for some time, but the difference between the medical and engineering cultures were always a difficult hurdle. With Sid, it was an immediate perfect match," says Gutmark, who began collaborating with Khosla in 2004. "My collaboration with him was one of the most valuable experiences I've ever had in my career, both personally and professionally. He was one of the rare people that you feel that your association with them makes you a better person. I'll miss him very much."
Gutmark calls Khosla "a true renaissance man" who had a deep interest in all aspects of humanity: medicine, engineering, art, psychology and philosophy. It was easy to communicate with him, to discuss new ideas, to study new approaches and to analyze problems from different perspectives, he says.
"His thesis was that if you look deeper than the classical medical approach of form equals function and try to understand the underlying physics you can discover new treatments," Gutmark says. "He applied this approach to voice research. He proposed a new mechanism of voice production that was different than the conventional one and therefore was quite controversial. With NIH support, his tenacity, vision, and skills, he was able to gain acceptance by the voice community and led to the development of new clinical approaches.
"Apart from being an outstanding scientist-clinician Sid had an amazing and rare personality. He was sensitive, compassionate, selfless, and always ready to help. It was clear that he chose his career in medicine as a mission to help others and he saw science as a tool to enhance his ability to achieve the highest level of perfection."
Khosla is survived by a brother. His wife, Heather, died in 2018. A celebration of Khosla's life will be scheduled at a later date.
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