T H E   N I H    C A T A L Y S T SEPTEMBER   -   OCTOBER   1 9 9 7 

Research Festival Beckons, October 6-10

The 11th annual NIH Research Festival arrives on the
Bethesda campus October 6 and will run through October 10. This year's festival will feature more than 20 workshops and 300 posters, with several symposia showcasing intramural research. Scientific sessions will be on Monday and Tuesday in the Natcher Center, including two major symposia hosted by the Structural Biology and Immunology Interest Groups. Monday's immunology symposium will discuss activation of the T-lymphocyte response, from basic cell biology to clinical applications. Tuesday's symposium will address the structural biology of viral diseases, including antiviral-drug design.

On the evenings following these symposia, the Technical Sales Association will sponsor picnic dinners. Wednesday's program includes a job fair for postdocs, organized by the Office of Education and co-sponsored by the National Foundation for Biomedical Research, and a special symposium honoring 60 years of intramural NIH research, co-sponsored by the DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Museum of Medical Research. Several distinguished current and former NIH investigators will speak at the Wednesday symposium.

On Thursday and Friday, the festival will conclude with the Technical Sales Association's Exhibit. Allen Spiegel, scientific director of NIDDK, chairs this year's festival. Details are available on the web at <http://pubnetmac.nih.gov/festival97/>.

In Vivo NMR Research Center
Celebrates 10th Year, October 7

The In Vivo NMR Research Center will celebrate its 10th an niversary on October 7, in conjunction with the NIH Research Festival. The program at the Mary W. Lasker Center (the Cloister) will feature lectures on in vivo NMR spectroscopy and functional neuroimaging by Jeffry R. Alger (UCLA), Chrit T. W. Moonen (University of Bordeaux), and Robert Turner (University of London), all of whom worked previously as investigators in the NMR Center.

Activities will begin at 12:30 p.m. with short talks commemorating the founding and development of the center, followed by the three lectures. A poster session (including refreshments) is scheduled from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Since its inception in 1987 with financial support from all ICDs with intramural programs on the NIH campus, the center has provided state-of-the-art facilities for carrying out in vivo NMR research on humans and animals. The center's building has been expanded to accommodate independent ICD NMR research programs, and further expansions are planned as the center is organizationally relocated in NINDS.

For more information on the October 7 program, contact Daryl J. DesPres, Building 10, Room B1-D125; e-mail: <depres@helix.nih.gov>.

WALs Starts Fourth Year


The Wednesday Afternoon Lectures
(WALs) have jumped into their fourth year with an outstanding slate of speakers. On September 10th, the speaker was Stanley Korsmeyer of Washington University, presenting the NIH Director's Dyer Lecture. On September 17, it was Lee Limbird of Vanderbilt University, presenting the Director's Pittman Lecture. And September 24 brought Jean MacCluer of the University of Texas in San Antonio, presenting the Gordon Lecture. The lineup for the rest of the fall and winter, and for the spring of next year, looks equally stellar.

The WALs series was launched as NIH's foremost campus-wide scientific lecture series in October 1994. The premier lectures - the NIH Director's Lectures - were scheduled for a uniform time and place: Wednesday afternoons at 3:00 in Masur Auditorium, Building 10. These lectures were augmented by with speakers nominated and hosted by NIH's interinstitute interest groups. To make the series even more irresistible, NIH's intramural institutes, centers, and divisions agreed to sponsor postlecture receptions outside the Clinical Center's Visitor Center. The receptions then become a good venue for poster sessions. This year, winners of the NIH Fellows Awards for Research Excellence will be displaying their prize-winning work at the Wednesday receptions.

Hosts of WALs speakers also schedule an informal meeting with postdocs and students - typically a brown-bag lunch. So block off your calendars for Wednesdays at 3:00 from now through June. For more information, visit the WALs Web site at <http://www1.od.nih.gov/wals/index.html>.

October 1: Peter Walter, University of California, San Francisco. "Intracellular signaling from the endoplasmic reticulum to the nucleus." Hosted by the Cell Biology Interest Group; sponsored by NCI.

October 8: No lecture - Research Festival (see box, this page).

October 15: Don C. Wiley, Harvard University. "Structure/function studies in MHC/antigen recognition and in viral entry mechanisms." Hosted by the Crystallography, Structural Biology, and Immunology Interest Groups; sponsored by NIAID.

October 22 (the Stetten Lecture): Jacqueline Barton, California Institute of Technology. "DNA-mediated electron transfer: chemistry at a distance." Hosted and sponsored by NIGMS.

October 29: Jonathan Beckwith, Harvard Medical School. "Making, breaking, and shuffling protein disulfide bonds in vivo." Hosted by the Lambda Lunch and Molecular Biology Interest Groups; sponsored by NLM.

November 3 (Special Monday Lecture): Peter Dervan, California Institute of Technology. "Molecular design for DNA recognition: an approach toward gene-specific transcription." Hosted by the Chemistry Interest Group; sponsored by NIGMS, NIDDK, and the American Chemical Society.

November 5: James Hildreth, Johns Hopkins University. "The role of host adhesion molecules in the biology of retroviruses." Hosted by the Trans-NIH AIDS Interest Group; sponsored by NIAID.

November 12: James Wilson, University of Pennsylvania. "Cystic fibrosis: pathogenesis and treatment." Hosted by the Clinical Research Interest Group; sponsored by NIA.

November 19. (the NIH Director's Lecture): Judah Folkman, Harvard Medical School. "New directions in angiogenesis research." Hosted by the Clinical Research Interest Group; sponsored by NCI.

November 26: Kai Simons, University of Heidelberg. "Sphingolipid-cholesterol rafts in membrane trafficking and signaling." Hosted by the Cell Biology Interest Group and the Fogarty International Center; sponsored by NICHD.

December 3: Wolf Singer, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. "The putative role of response synchronization in cortical processing." Hosted by the Integrative Neuroscience Interest Group and the Fogarty International Center; sponsored by NINDS.

December 10. (the Khoury Lecture): David Baltimore, California Institute of Technology. "Cell life and cell death." Hosted by the Virology and Trans-NIH AIDS Interest Groups; sponsored by NIAID.

December 17: Michael Geoffrey Rosenfeld, University of California, San Diego. "Mechanisms of transcriptional control of neural and endocrine development." Hosted by the Neurobiology, Molecular Biology, and Transcription Factors Interest Groups; sponsored by NIMH.

December 24: Holiday break.

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