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NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series

Watch lectures live at https://videocast.nih.gov at the time of the event.
Binge-watch the archives dating back more than 20 years at https://videocast.nih.gov/PastEvents?c=3.

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Featured Lectures

  • The Contagion Next Time: Underlying Socioeconomic and Racial Divides and Our Risk from COVID and Future Pandemics

    December 16, 2020 - 2:00pm to 3:00pm
    Sandro Galea, M.D., M.P.H., Dr.PH., Boston University School of Public Health

    Health is a product of a broad range of social and economic conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic showed how longstanding underinvestment in these conditions affected our overall health during a time of crisis and widened health gaps between racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups. COVID-19 illustrates how our extraordinary achievement in biomedical science—evidenced by remarkable advances to a COVID-19 vaccine in record time—is not matched by commensurate achievement in creating the conditions that can generate health in populations.

  • Creating Healthy Longevity: A Basis for a Third Demographic Dividend for Society

    October 6, 2021 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
    Margaret Pittman Lecture
    Linda Fried, M.D. , Columbia University Medical Center

    This lecture addresses the opportunities of our extended life span for individuals and society if health span is extended to approximate life span. It considers the range of health outcomes that would need to be prevented or delayed, and considers the possibilities to accomplish this. Dr. Fried will offer a perspective that increased health span combined with enabling the potential social capital of older adults could set the stage for a previously unimagined "Third Demographic Dividend" for societies.

  • Blood Stem Cell Clonality and the Niche

    November 17, 2021 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
    Leonard Zon, M.D., Harvard Medical School

    Dr. Zon will discuss two critical avenues of his current research: identifying the genes that direct stem cells to become cancers or to develop into more specialized blood or organ cells; and developing chemical or genetic suppressors to cure cancers and many other devastating diseases. In the past five years, his lab has collected more than 30 mutants affecting the hematopoietic system. Several represent excellent animal models of human disease.

  • Thinking Critically About How We Do Science

    January 5, 2022 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
    Dani S. Bassett, Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

    Science is a beautiful rational process of highly structured inquiry that allows us to learn more about our world. By it, we see past old theories, and build new ones. We realize a phenomenon occurs because of this, and not that. Perennially the skeptic, we spar with our own internal models of how things might happen: always questioning, ever critical, rarely certain. What if we were to turn this audacious questioning towards—not science—but how we do science? Not broadly a natural phenomenon but more specifically a human phenomenon?

Upcoming Lectures

Heterogeneity of Breast Cancer Genomes: Going Beyond Therapy to Risk Assessment and Precision Healthcare

May 25, 2022 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Marshall W. Nirenberg Lecture
Olufunmilayo Olopade, M.D., University of Chicago

(This will be a hybrid lecture, in person at Lipsett Amphitheather and on NIH VideoCast.) Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women, with an estimated 2.3 million new cases diagnosed in 2021 worldwide. Geographic variations in age specific incidence and mortality point to differences in etiology. Decades after discovery, the estrogen receptor remains the single most important determinant of outcomes in breast cancer but innovative and precise biology-driven approaches to therapy are being integrated into clinical practice.

The Future of Non-invasive Functional Imaging in the Era of Big Data

June 1, 2022 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
NIH Director’s Lecture
Damien Fair, Ph.D., University of Minnesota

The Fair laboratory focuses on mechanisms and principles that underlie the developing brain. The majority of this work uses functional MRI and resting state functional connectivity MRI to assess typical and atypical populations. Dr. Fair is the co-director of the new Masonic Institute for the Developing Brain.

Molecular Genetic Mechanisms in Neuronal Stress and Maintenance

June 7, 2022 - 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Yishi Jin, Ph.D., UCSD School of Medicine

(This will be a hybrid lecture, on Tuesday, in person at Lipsett Amphitheather and on NIH VideoCast.) The Jin lab research focuses on the molecular genetic mechanisms underlying the development and function of the nervous system using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. The transparency, defined anatomy, and rapid life cycle of this organism greatly facilitate our studies at the subcellular resolution. Moreover, the entre cell lineage and connectome are known, enabling functional understanding at deep levels.

The page was last updated on Tuesday, March 15, 2022 - 8:37am

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