The Oregon Hearing Research Center (OHRC) was founded in 1966 under the auspices of the Department of Otolaryngology/ Head and Neck Surgery at Oregon Health & Science University with the name Kresge Hearing Research Laboratory. The center currently occupies a 17,000 square-foot facility in the Hatfield Research Center building and 4000 square feet in the Medical Research Building at OHSU. It has support laboratories for electronics, electron microscopy, confocal microscopy, digital photography and histology.

The center has research opportunities for U.S. and foreign scientists, and trains medical students and residents in otolaryngology. A multidisciplinary staff collaborates with colleagues from other OHSU departments as well as from research institutions around the world. Studies are on the fundamental neurobiology of the auditory and vestibular system in order to understand how pathologies occur, and to continue to develop and test new chemical, mechanical and electrical solutions for hearing problems.

Current research funding comes from the National Institutes of Health, the American Otological Society, the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon, NASA, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Deafness Research Foundation, the American Tinnitus Association and private donors.