Drummond Memorial Lecture

APRIL 12, 2017
3:00 - 4:00 PM LIBIN THEATRE
David Julius, PhD
Professor and Department Chair
Department of Physiology
University of California, San Francisco

"Natural Products as Probes of the Pain Pathway: From Physiology to Atomic Structure"

Dr. David Julius is Professor and Chair of Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco.  He is a member of the US National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (honorary). His awards include the Perl/UNC Prize, the Unilever Science Prize, the Passano Award, the Prince of Asturias Prize for Technical and Scientific Research, the Shaw Prize in Life Sciences and Medicine, and the Paul Janssen Prize for Biomedical Research

Thomas A. Rando, MD, PhD
Professor of Neurology & Neurological Sciences
Stanford School of Medicine
Stanford University, Stanford, CA

Dr. Rando’s research concerns the basic biology of stem cells and how they function in adult tissue homeostasis, in degenerative diseases, and in aging. Groundbreaking work from his lab showed that the age-related decline in stem cell function is due primarily to influences of the aged environment rather than to intrinsic, irreversible aging of stem cell themselves. His work has spurned research in the basic processes of cellular aging and rejuvenation.

In 2005 he received the prestigious NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his work at the interface between stem cell biology and the biology of aging, and in 2013 he recently a Transformative Research Award from the NIH for studies on the benefits of exercise on cognition and lifespan.

Dr. Barbara J. Meyer
HHMI Investigator
Professor of Genetics, Genomics, & Development
Department of Molecular & Cell Biology
University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Barbara J. Meyer is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and Professor of Genetics, Genomics, and Development in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. Dr. Meyer received her B.A. from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from Harvard University. She completed postdoctoral studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. She is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She is the recipient of a Harvey Society Lecture Award and a National Science Foundation Woman’s Faculty Award.

Barbara Meyer studies sex determination in the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans to discover fundamental principles in developmental biology: How do gene networks specify cell fates? How is developmental potential restricted prior to differentiation? How do species evolve? She also studies X chromosome–wide regulation of gene expression, a process known as dosage compensation, and its mechanistic link to higher-order chromatin structure, recombination in meiosis, and chromosome segregation during mitosis and meiosis.

Dr. Mark Batzer
Friday, May 25, 2012
 3:00 pm to 4:00 pm in Theatre 1 of the Health Sciences Centre

Dr. Mark Batzer is currently a LSU System Boyd Professor and Dr. Mary Lou Applewhite Distinguished Professor, Department of Biological Sciences at Louisiana State University. Dr. Batzer received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Michigan State University and his Ph.D. from LSU. He completed postdoctoral studies at the LSU Health Sciences Center and in the Human Genome Center at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He became a faculty member at the LSU Health Sciences Center in 1995 and moved to the LSU main campus in Baton Rouge in 2001.

Approximately 45% of the human genome is derived from transposable elements or "Jumping genes". The Batzer laboratory has been at the forefront of studies dealing with genomic variation related to mobile genetic elements. These studies revealed the diverse roles that mobile elements have played in shaping the architecture of mammalian genomes, including the human lineage. He has also investigated the phylogenetic relationships between species throughout the primate order using mobile element insertion polymorphisms.

Dr. Batzer has been elected an AAAS Fellow (2007) and named an HHMI Distinguished Mentor (2008). He is a leader in the field of mobile element biology and mammalian genome evolution. He has been involved as an organizer of multiple international meetings in the field and has published over 250 research articles.

Dr. Andrew Fire
Thursday, January 20, 2011
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm in the Libin Theatre
 Reception to follow in the HRIC Atrium

Andrew Fire is Professor of Pathology and Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. He received his Ph.D. in biology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983 under the mentorship of Nobel laureate geneticist Phillip Sharp.  From there, he moved to Cambridge, England, as a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow and became a member of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology group headed by Nobel laureate biologist Sydney Brenner.

From 1986 to 2003, Dr. Fire was a staff member of the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Department of Embryology in Baltimore, Maryland. He became an adjunct professor in the Department of Biology at Johns Hopkins University in 1989 and joined the Stanford faculty in 2003. The initial work on double stranded RNA as a trigger of gene silencing was published while Fire and his group were at the Carnegie Labs.

Dr. Fire was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Craig C. Mello, for the discovery of RNA interference (RNAi).  Dr. Fire is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He also serves on the Board of Scientific Counselors and the National Center for Biotechnology, National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Dario R. Alessi
Friday, May 21, 2010
3:00 pm to 4:00 pm
Theatre 1, Health Sciences Centre
Reception to follow

Dr. Dario Alessi is Professor of Signal Transduction in the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee. He was born in France and educated in the UK. After completing a PhD from the University of Birmingham in 1991, he carried out postdoctoral research with Sir Philip Cohen FRS at Dundee, Scotland.

Since 1998, Professor Alessi has been a Programme Leader in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Protein Phosphorylation Unit in Dundee where he has investigated how protein kinases and their regulation by extracellular signals control almost all aspects of cell biology. His more important research achievements include discovery and description of various protein kinase-signaling networks that are relevant to understanding and treating human disease: mTOR pathway and LKB1 in cancer and diabetes; LRRK2 in Parkinson’s disease; TTBK2 in spinocerebellar ataxia movement disorder; and? WNK-SPAK in Gordon’s hypertension syndrome.

Professor Alessi has been the recipient of multiple honors, including the Colworth Medal of the Biochemical Society (1999), the Young European Investigator Award (2000), FEBS Anniversary Prize for the study of biochemistry & molecular biology (2003), EMBO Gold Medal (2005), Francis Crick Prize of the Royal Society (2006) and has been elected to The Royal Society of Edinburgh, the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) and The Royal Society.