Lynne E. Maquat, Ph.D. University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry
Dr. Maquat is the J. Lowell Orbison Endowed Chair and Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the School of Medicine and Dentistry, Director of the Center for RNA Biology, and Chair of Graduate Women in Science at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. After obtaining her Ph.D. in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and undertaking post-doctoral work at the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research, she joined Roswell Park Cancer Institute before moving to the University of Rochester.
Alondra Nelson, Ph.D., M.Phil. Columbia University
Dr. Nelson is president of the Social Science Research Council and professor of sociology at Columbia University. An award-winning scholar of science, medicine, and social inequality, her recent books include The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation after the Genome, Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History, and Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. Dr.
Jeffrey A. Hubbell, Ph.D. University of Chicago Institute for Molecular Engineering
Dr. Hubbell uses biomaterials and protein engineering approaches to investigate topics in regenerative medicine and immunotherapeutics. In regenerative medicine, he focuses on biomaterial matrices that mimic the extracellular matrix and on growth factor – extracellular matrix interactions, working in a variety of animal models of regenerative medicine.
Gerald M. Rubin, Ph.D. Howard Hughes Medical Institute
For his lecture, Dr. Rubin will discuss the current state of circuit neuroscience in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster using examples from his lab’s work on learning and memory, sleep, and aggression. Within the next five years, those working with Drosophila can expect to have comprehensive datasets, including a complete connectome, and powerful tools with which to study the fly’s brain and behavior.
Research in the Ghedin Lab meets at the interface of microbiology, genomics, and systems biology. Projects touch on the extent of intra- and inter-host microparasite (viruses and bacteria) diversity within the context of transmission and virulence, and parse the relationship between microbial ecology in the respiratory tract and disease progression.
Cancer and aging are intricately intertwined. Organisms with dividing cells are at substantial risk for developing cancer. Evolution “solved” the cancer problem by selecting for tumor-suppressive mechanisms, which protect these organisms from cancer—at least for the reproductively active portion of the life span. Beyond that portion of the life span, these mechanisms can drive pathologies associated with aging, including, ironically, cancer. For her lecture, Dr.
More than 350 monogenic disorders of the immune system have been discovered. They are rare diseases, however, with an estimated overall frequency of one in 2,000 to 3,000 live births. This study of rare diseases is continuously providing a flow of information on how the human immune system is built; how it fights infection and avoids autoimmune, inflammatory, allergic diseases; and how it is related to some cancers. Examples will be illustrated during Dr. Fischer’s lecture as he describes recent findings from his laboratory.
The opioid crisis continues to plague the United States, with tens of thousands of lives lost every year and other significant health and social consequences. What began as an epidemic fueled by the pharmaceutical industry, the opioid crisis is now shaped by an illicit market of highly potent and increasingly dangerous opioids. A coordinated effort is needed to reduce opioid misuse and address the continuum from primary prevention to effective delivery of evidence-based care for those with opioid-use disorder. Dr.
Science is the best thing that has happened to Homo sapiens. It is important to apply the scientific method in ways that are the most efficient in leading to—and translating—important discoveries. However, this goal is not easy. There are many situations where research practices are applied in suboptimal ways, resulting in a reproducibility crisis in which trust in scientific findings is diminished. In his lecture, Dr. Ioannidis will discuss how we can improve the robustness, efficiency, and transparency of research practices.
Lauren O. Bakaletz, Ph.D. The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital
The Bakaletz laboratory’s research focus is attempting to understand the pathogenic mechanisms operational in the highly prevalent pediatric disease, otitis media (OM) (or middle ear infection). Specifically, we are interested in elucidating how upper respiratory tract viruses predispose the middle ear to invasion by any of the three predominant bacterial pathogens of OM (nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae, Moraxella catarrhalis and Streptococcus pneumoniae).
This page was last updated on Tuesday, August 10, 2021
