Elena Fuentes-Afflick, MD, MPH Association of American Medical Colleges
*Masur Auditorium
Dr. Fuentes-Afflick, Chief Scientific Officer for the AAMC, Association of Medical Schools, will present information about historical trends in the U.S. biomedical research workforce. She will highlight the unique characteristics of specific subgroups of biomedical researchers and will lead a discussion of strategies to support the biomedical research workforce.
You can't directly communicate trust. But you can communicate in ways that demonstrate trustworthiness. This talk will share what social science knows about how communication choices can shape specific trustworthiness perceptions and how these perceptions may affect people's willingness to trust health-related decision-makers.
Dr. Rice plans to present a personal history of his career studying animal viruses. From a surprise landing in a virology lab, to studying model enveloped arboviruses, Sindbis virus and yellow fever virus, and the dawn of molecular biology, which ushered in the ability to develop reverse genetic systems for probing virus biology and engineering viruses for new applications. In parallel, there was growing recognition of a new hepatitis virus affecting transfused patients.
Marylyn Ritchie, Ph.D. Medical University of South Carolina
Artificial intelligence is reshaping precision medicine by changing how biomedical data are transformed into knowledge, clinical evidence, and actionable decisions. This lecture will examine how AI can integrate electronic health record data, clinical phenotypes, genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, imaging, and other data modalities to advance disease characterization, risk prediction, and therapeutic discovery.
The development of new medicines is rarely straightforward. In this lecture, William Pao, M.D., Ph.D., will discuss how basic research, new technologies, and clinical observations can come together over time to produce important advances in treatment. Using examples from lung cancer, spinal muscular atrophy, and hemophilia, he will trace the discoveries that led to medicines including osimertinib, risdiplam, and emicizumab. These stories show how work that may begin with a fundamental scientific question can, sometimes decades later, contribute to a new therapy.
Dr. Swee Lay Thein is Senior Investigator and Chief of the Sickle Cell Branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. An internationally recognized hematologist, she previously served as Professor of Molecular Hematology and Clinical Director of the Red Cell Centre at King’s College London. Her research focuses on sickle cell disease, thalassemia, and other inherited red blood cell disorders. Dr. Thein has authored more than 400 scientific publications and is a Fellow of the U.K. Academy of Medical Sciences.
Scott L. Delp, Ph.D., is the James H. Clark Professor of Bioengineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Orthopaedic Surgery at Stanford University and Founding Chair of Stanford’s Department of Bioengineering. He directs the Wu Tsai Human Performance Alliance at Stanford, as well as the NIH-funded Restore and Mobilize Centers. Dr. Delp develops technologies to advance movement science, rehabilitation, and human health. His laboratory created widely used platforms including OpenSim and Simtk.org, supporting an international community of researchers and students.
This page was last updated on Tuesday, September 1, 2026
