NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

The 2022–2023 Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS) begins in September.

We are planning to be in person in Lipsett Amphitheater from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m.

September 7 — Jill Banfield, Ph.D., UC Berkeley (Rolla E. Dyer Lecture)
September 14 — Ambroise Wonkam, M.D., Ph.D., Johns Hopkins Medicine
September 21 — Judith Frydman, Ph.D., Stanford University
September 28 — Tracy Johnson, Ph.D., UCLA (NIH Director’s Lecture)

Full schedule to come!

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.

Not at the NIH? Sign up for notices about each lecture.

Dynamic Organelle Remodeling: Viral Mechanisms to Subvert Host Cell Biology

Wednesday, June 29, 2022, 3:00 to 4:00pm
Ileana Cristea, Ph.D., Princeton University

(This will be a hybrid lecture, in person at Lipsett Amphitheather and on NIH VideoCast.) Organelle remodeling is an essential component of all human virus infections. Viruses rely on the biological processes partitioned within organelles for their infectious cycles. Likewise, host cells require organelles to detect and combat pathogen invasion. Here, we integrate molecular virology, super-resolution microscopy, and proteomics to characterize organelle structure-function relationships in the context of viral infections.

Marathons for T Cells: How They Keep on Killing

Wednesday, June 15, 2022, 3:00 to 4:00pm
Gillian Griffiths, Ph.D., University of Cambridge

My presentation will focus on the cell biology that underlies the remarkable ability of cytotoxic T lymphocytes to act as serial killers, with individual cells providing sustained killing in response to cancer or virally infected targets. I’ll describe a screen that picked up genes that are required for sustained killing and revealed an unexpected role for mitochondria as homestatic regulators of CTL killing. I’ll then describe work by a former NIH-OxCam student that reveals an (again unexpected) role for transcription during killing.

Charting the Path for Alzheimer's Prevention with the Colombian Kindred with Autosomal Dominant Alzheimer's Disease

Wednesday, June 8, 2022, 3:00 to 4:00pm
Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging
Yakeel Quiroz, Ph.D., Harvard Medical School

(This will be a hybrid lecture, previously advertised as being on June 22, now June 8 in person at Lipsett Amphitheather and on NIH VideoCast.) We work with an extraordinary kindred of approximately 6,000 individuals in Antioquia, Colombia, which contains roughly 1,200 carriers of a single autosomal-dominant mutation (PSEN1 E280A). These carriers are expected to develop early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, with almost 100% certainty, and have a well-characterized disease course, with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) occurring at a median age of 44, and dementia at 49.