UW News

April 20, 2006

Hille, Neurath lectures coming up

Hille Memorial Lecture

Dr. David E. Clapham will present the Einar Hille Memorial Lecture in Neurosciences, sponsored by the Department of Physiology and Biophysics. He will speak on Ion Channels — Bacteria to Brain at 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 26, in Hogness Auditorium in the Health Sciences Building. The lecture is open to everyone.

Clapham is the Aldo R. Castañeda professor of cardiovascular research at Harvard Medical School, director of cardiovascular research at Children’s Hospital in Boston, and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

His research focuses on ion channels, small pores in the membrane of cells that open and close in response to stimuli, allowing ions to pass into and out of the cell. Work in Dr. Clapham’s laboratory has revealed that ion channels can be regulated in many ways, and his lecture will cover a range of controls that have been found.

The lecture was established by Kirsti Hille in honor of her late husband, a professor of mathematics at Yale University and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Bertil Hille, son of Einar and Kirsti Hille, is a professor of physiology and biophysics at the UW.

Neurath Lecture

Dr. Nancy Hopkins, the Amgen professor of molecular biology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will present the 22nd Annual Hans Neurath Lecture on Thursday, May 4, at 4 p.m. in room T-625 of the Health Sciences Building.

She will speak on Identifying Genes for Development and Disease in Zebrafish. The Neurath Lectures, which are co-sponsored by the Department of Biochemistry and ZymoGenetics, Inc., honor the founding chair of the department, the late Professor Hans Neurath.

Hopkins’ research group, working with zebrafish, developed a technique that has allowed them to identify about 25 percent of the genes that are required for a fertilized fish egg to develop into a free-swimming larva.

Many of these genes have turned out to have roles in diseases including cancer.

Hopkins also coauthored the forth Edition of Molecular Biology of the Gene, for which she wrote two chapters making modern molecular virology and immunology accessible to an undergraduate audience.

She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine.

Professor Hans Neurath came to the School of Medicine in 1950, where he served as the first chair of the Department of Biochemistry. He founded the journal Biochemistry in 1961 and served as editor for 30 years. In 1990 he founded and became editor-in-chief of Protein Science.