NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

The NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series, colloquially known as WALS, is the highest-profile lecture program at the NIH. Traditionally, lectures have occurred on most Wednesdays from September through June from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET in Lipsett auditorium, Building 10 on the NIH Bethesda campus.

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Immunology From First Principles

Ruslan Medzhitov, Ph.D.
Yale School of Medicine

William E. Paul Lecture

The lecture will discuss allergic immunity – role of the environment in allergic sensitization, differences of allergic immunity with antimicrobial immunity, and the role of neuro-immune interactions in allergies. He will also discuss ecological perspectives o the biological functions of allergic defenses and possible roles of the rise of allergic diseases. Finally, he will discuss the role of antigen exposure and antigen cross-reactivity in protection and susceptibility to allergic diseases.

 Learning Objectives:

Mechanisms and Meaning for Smell

Sandeep Robert Datta, M.D., Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School

Nearly all animals depend upon smell to usefully interact with the world. Although underappreciated, smell is also critical to humans, as patients with olfactory loss face substantial additional risks for injury, psychiatric disease, and death. However, smell remains a mystery — we know little about how odor information is organized in the brain, and even less about how odors are linked to perception. Here I review the canonical mechanisms thought to enable olfaction, and discuss recent surprises that are revising our ideas about how our sense of smell might work.

Bioorthogonal Chemistry: The Journey from Basic Science to Clinical Translation (2023–2024, rescheduled 2024-2025)

Carolyn Bertozzi, Ph.D.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute & Stanford University

Margaret Pittman Lecture

Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical & Systems Biology and Radiology (by courtesy) at Stanford University, the Baker Family Director at Sarafan ChEM-H, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1993. After completing postdoctoral work at UCSF in the field of cellular immunology, she joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996.

This page was last updated on Monday, January 6, 2025