NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series
Accepting nominations for the 2022–2023 WALS season through January 21, 2022.
Watch lectures live at https://videocast.nih.gov at the time of the event.
Binge-watch the archives dating back more than 20 years at https://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents?c=3.
Oh, one more thing…
Not at the NIH? Sign up for notices about each lecture.
Featured Lectures
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Creating Healthy Longevity: A Basis for a Third Demographic Dividend for Society
October 6, 2021 - 3:00pm to 4:00pmLinda Fried, M.D. , Columbia University Medical CenterThis lecture addresses the opportunities of our extended life span for individuals and society if health span is extended to approximate life span. It considers the range of health outcomes that would need to be prevented or delayed, and considers the possibilities to accomplish this. Dr. Fried will offer a perspective that increased health span combined with enabling the potential social capital of older adults could set the stage for a previously unimagined "Third Demographic Dividend" for societies.
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Blood Stem Cell Clonality and the Niche
November 17, 2021 - 3:00pm to 4:00pmLeonard Zon, M.D., Harvard Medical SchoolDr. Zon will discuss two critical avenues of his current research: identifying the genes that direct stem cells to become cancers or to develop into more specialized blood or organ cells; and developing chemical or genetic suppressors to cure cancers and many other devastating diseases. In the past five years, his lab has collected more than 30 mutants affecting the hematopoietic system. Several represent excellent animal models of human disease.
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Thinking Critically About How We Do Science
January 5, 2022 - 3:00pm to 4:00pmDani S. Bassett, Ph.D., University of PennsylvaniaScience is a beautiful rational process of highly structured inquiry that allows us to learn more about our world. By it, we see past old theories, and build new ones. We realize a phenomenon occurs because of this, and not that. Perennially the skeptic, we spar with our own internal models of how things might happen: always questioning, ever critical, rarely certain. What if we were to turn this audacious questioning towards—not science—but how we do science? Not broadly a natural phenomenon but more specifically a human phenomenon?
Upcoming Lectures
Translating Studies of HIV Immunity to SARS-CoV-2
Understanding protective immunity to viral infections is critical to informing approaches to prevention. There is accumulating evidence that antibodies that bind viral entry proteins and mediate killing of infected cells may contribute to protection from infection and disease. Data to support this will be presented for HIV, with emphasis on pediatric infections. This lecture will also highlight how findings from these studies of immunity to HIV can inspire similar questions related to SARS-CoV-2.
Turning Genes into Medicines: Challenges in the Development of Gene Therapeutics
Katherine High joined AskBio in January 2021 as President, Therapeutics and member of the AskBio Board of Directors. Dr. High is responsible for driving the strategic direction and execution of the company’s preclinical and clinical programs. Most recently, she was a Visiting Professor at Rockefeller University.
Reconstruction of the Pathophysiology of Chronic Pain from Genome-wide Studies
The Diatchenko lab investigates the psychological, molecular, cellular, and genetic pathways that mediate both acute and persistent pain states. Their primary goal is to identify the critical elements of human genetic variability contributing to pain sensitivity and pathophysiological pain states that will enable individualized treatments and therapies. Other related research endeavors include molecular hierarchy of functional SNPs (single-nucleotide polymorphisms) and SNP-depend regulation of gene expression, underlying molecular pain signaling.
The page was last updated on Tuesday, December 7, 2021 - 10:30am
