Omowunmi “Wunmi” Sadik, Ph.D. New Jersey Institute of Technology
Conventional methods of assessing pain are mostly subjective, and the challenge of objectively quantifying the problem is a daunting task. As pain levels increase, so do the amount and variety of pain killers required to manage pain successfully. Dr. Sadik’s current research focuses on creative new kinds of biosensors to objectively detect and quantify pain biomarkers. Her lab has developed novel multidimensional biosensors that have been tested in more than a thousand patients. This will be the focus of her talk.
Francis Collins (moderator), Claire M. Fraser, Eric S. Lander, & Charles Rotimi Multiple affiliations
This lecture and panel discussion will be led by Dr. Francis Collins and will feature Dr. Eric Lander, President and Founding Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Dr. Claire Fraser, Director of the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland, and Dr. Charles Rotimi, Chief of the Metabolic, Cardiovascular and Inflammatory Disease Genomics Branch at NHGRI. Dr.
My lab is interested in elucidation the activity of virulence factors from pathogenic bacteria so that we can gain novel molecular insight into eukaryotic signaling systems. The marine bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the worldwide leading cause of seafood-borne acute gastroenteritis. We are working on the two V. parahaemolyticus type 3 secretion systems (T3SS1 and T3SS2) and their bacterial effectors to understand how signaling systems in the eukaryotic host can be manipulated by these bacterial pathogens.
Cells are the basic unit of life and form a key intermediate between genotype and phenotype, which is essential to explain how the gene variants that contribute to disease risk act. The recent advent of methods for high-throughput single-cell and spatial profiling has opened the way to create a human cells atlas: comprehensive reference maps of all human cells as a basis for both understanding human health and diagnosing, monitoring, and treating disease.
David A. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. Harvard Medical School
David A. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. is a Professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for Biology of Aging Research at Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1995. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. with Dr. Leonard Guarente where he co discovered a cause of aging for yeast as well as the role of Sir2 in epigenetic changes driven by genome instability.
Observational studies have contributed to groundbreaking findings on the role of modifiable risk factors for cognitive aging including cardiovascular risk factors, sleep, and traumatic brain injury. Drawing from a multidisciplinary perspective, Dr. Yaffe will highlight how epidemiological studies can advance the field by generating hypotheses, applying innovative methods across the life course, and investigating populations often not included in trials.
Dr. Higginbotham will discuss the arguments against “race,” why this topic is important, and its impact on science and healthcare. In her case study, she will highlight the outcomes of a 20-year clinical trial that uncovered a new biologically measurable risk factor. This is intended to be a lecture that will inspire additional thinking around the use of race in science and medicine.
For this talk, Dr. Green will describe her laboratory’s recent efforts to define how ribosome elongation distress is connected to cellular signaling pathways involved in cell fate determination. She will discuss how colliding ribosomes are central to this activation, and she will elucidate how a combination of approaches — from genetics, to biochemistry, to structural biology, to genomics — can reveal such insights.
The spectre of drug resistance renders the development of antivirals difficult, especially in RNA viruses whose genome replication is highly error prone. Karla Kirkegaard’s lab has been working to develop principles by which the outgrowth of drug-resistant viruses can be thwarted through the choice of noncanonical antiviral targets.
Increasing prevalence and severity of multi-drug-resistant bacterial infections require novel management strategies. One possible strategy is a renewed approach to ‘phage therapy,’ where these administered viruses not only kill the target bacteria, but also predictably select for phage resistance that reduces virulence and/or increases antibiotic sensitivity (evolutionary trade-offs).
This page was last updated on Tuesday, August 10, 2021
