Current Lecture Season

All lectures will be in person in Lipsett Amphitheater, Building 10, from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET (new time) with remote viewing at https://videocast.nih.gov.

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WALS 2025–2026 season poster

Innate and Intrinsic Host Enzymes Shaping RNA Virus Infection

Michaela Gack, PhD
Cleveland Clinic Florida Research and Innovation Center

George Khoury Lecture

Dr. Gack is the Arthur and Marylin Levitt Endowed Chair and Scientific Director of the Cleveland Clinic Florida Research and Innovation Center. She did her PhD training in virology at Harvard Medical School as part of a collaborative graduate program between Harvard and the Friedrich Alexander University (FAU) Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. Before joining Cleveland Clinic in 2020, she held faculty positions at Harvard University and The University of Chicago. 

What Interventions Might Improve Research?

John Ioannidis, MD, PhD
Standford University

My work aims to improve research methods and practices and to enhance approaches to integrating information and generating reliable evidence. Science is the best thing that can happen to humans, but doing research is like swimming in an ocean at night. Science thrives in darkness. Born in New York City (1965), raised in Athens. Valedictorian (1984), Athens College; National Award, Greek Mathematical Society (1984); MD (top rank of medical school class) from National University of Athens (1990); also received DSc in biopathology from same institution.

Germ Cells are Forever

Ruth Lehmann, Ph.D.
Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research

Margaret Pittman Lecture

Lehmann earned her undergraduate degree and a PhD in biology with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard from the University of Tübingen, in her home country of Germany. She has conducted research at the University of Washington, the University of Freiburg, the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, She was a Member of the Whitehead Institute Member and on the faculty of MIT from 1988-1996.

The Surprising Chemistry of Nonenzymatic RNA Replication

Jack W. Szostak, PhD
The University of Chicago

Marshall W. Nirenberg Lecture

Jack Szostak is a biologist of Polish British descent, Nobel Prize laureate, university professor at the University of Chicago, former professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, and Alexander Rich Distinguished Investigator at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. Szostak has made significant contributions to the field of genetics. His achievement helped scientists to map the location of genes in mammals and to develop techniques for manipulating genes. His research findings in this area are also instrumental to the Human Genome Project.

Super-Resolution Imaging of Transcription in Living Cells

Ibrahim I. Cissé, PhD.
Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

Ibrahim Cissé was born in Niger. He received his Bachelor of Sciences in Physics in 2004 from North Carolina Central University and completed his PhD in physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA) in 2009. After a postdoctoral stay at the École Normale Supérieure of Paris (France), Cissé returned to the USA in 2013 to become a Research Specialist at Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.

The Past, Present, and Future State of Obesity Medicine

Jamy Ard, MD
Wake Forest University School of Medicine

Jamy Ard, MD, is Vice Dean for Clinical Research of the Wake Forest University School of Medicine. In this role, Dr. Ard will oversee clinical research resources and infrastructure across the WFUSM campuses and across the Advocate Health System. Dr. Ard works with research teams to support the translation of clinical research to the communities we serve to drive improved health outcomes and population-level impact.

Artificial Intelligence: Solution or Obstacle for Climate Action?

Francesca Dominici, PhD
Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Dr. Francesca Dominici is the Clarence James Gamble Professor of Biostatistics, Population and Data Science at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of the Harvard Data Science Initiative at Harvard University.  She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the International Society of Mathematical Statistics. In 2024, she was named by TIME100 Health as one of the most influential scientists in global health in the world.

2 Billion Years of Shelterin and T-loops: From Telomere Protection to Cancer Prevention

Titia de Lange, Ph.D.
The Rockefeller University

Titia de Lange is the Director of the Anderson Center for Cancer Research, the Leon Hess professor and the head of Laboratory Cell Biology and Genetics at Rockefeller University. De Lange obtained her Masters on "Chromatin structure of the human β-globin gene locus" at the University of Amsterdam in 1981, and subsequently her PhD at the same institution in 1985 with Piet Borst on surface antigen genes in trypanosomes. In 1985 she joined Harold Varmus's lab at the University of California, San Francisco. Since 1990 she has had a faculty position at the Rockefeller University.

Ticking Clocks: Explaining Aging in Population Studies

Eileen Crimmins, PhD
USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology

Florence Mahoney Lecture on Aging

Eileen Crimmins, PhD, is University Professor and holder of the AARP Chair in Gerontology at the USC Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

This page was last updated on Wednesday, August 27, 2025