�鶹ӰԺ

Roy Parker is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Director of the BioFrontiers Institute, Cech-Leinwand Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, and Distinguished Professor at the �鶹ӰԺ. He is a global leader in the study of RNA molecules, which are both molecular machines and the messenger of genetic information. His pioneering work has revealed new aspects of the life of RNA and how abnormalities in RNA regulation contribute to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Diseases. He was President of the RNA Society and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and Member of the National Academy of Sciences. When not exploring new territory in RNA and neurodegeneration, he can be found exploring aquatic territory, including multiple rafting runs through the Grand Canyon and rare routes on other Southwestern US rivers.

Neurodegenerative diseases are a set of common devastating, progressive diseases including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Diseases. How these diseases are caused and spread in the human brain is an area of intense research. Progress is being made at understanding the underlying mechanisms causing these diseases, with the potential for future therapies. Dr. Parker, an internationally recognized leader in RNA biology who has recently focused his work on neurodegenerative diseases, will discuss these topics. 

Dr. Sammy Ramsey is an Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and holds a Marvin H. Caruthers Endowed Chair for Early-Career Faculty at the �鶹ӰԺ. He is also the founder and Executive Director of the non-profit Ramsey Research Foundation, whose mission is to safeguard pollinator health and diversity. Dr. Ramsey’s research has shifted the accepted paradigm of how the parasitic mite, Varroa destructor, preys on honey bees to ultimately kill them and drive the enormous annual loss of these essential pollinators. He has won a National Geographic Wayfinder Award and been recognized by the Explorers Club as one of “50 People Changing the World That You Should Know �鶹ӰԺ”. A gifted and dedicated science communicator, he is regularly featured in mass media such as NPR, CBS Mornings, PBS Nature, and Wired. You can also hear him literally singing the praises of insects: he has worked professionally as a singer and composes music.

While pesticides dominate most discussions of honey bee welfare, research has consistently shown that parasites are the most significant single driver of honey bee losses. The landscape of honey bee parasites is diverse and strange, so much so that bee parasites have earned their own ecological category "Melittophiles". Each has had to amass a suite of odd adaptations to persist with social organisms primed by millions of years of evolution to exclude any creature seeking access to their trove of biologically invaluable treasures (honey, wax, bee bread, brood, etc). This research has taken me and my team (in collaboration with National Geographic) all over Asia as we track the emergence of a new Melittophile destroying bees in each new country it spreads to carving an unsettling path westward. 

Dr. Sara Sawyer is a Professor at the �鶹ӰԺ. She has received national and international prizes in virology. In 2011, President Barack Obama awarded her the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers at the White House. In 2022, she received the NIH’s Director’s Pioneer award. In 2020, she co-founded Darwin Biosciences, an infectious disease diagnostics company located in �鶹ӰԺ, Colorado. Dr. Sawyer serves on the NIH’s Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council. She studies animal viruses that infect humans.

The COVID and HIV crises illustrate the global tragedies that can arise after humans are infected with the viruses of animals. Yet COVID was met with a vaccine in less than a year while we have waited over 40 years for an HIV vaccine. How do virus characteristics and our own immune systems dictate which animal viruses make us sick, which ones cause pandemics, and which ones are harder to develop vaccines against? This talk will discuss the challenges associated with diagnosing human infections caused by rare and new animal viruses. I will also discuss new hope in the quest for an HIV vaccine.��

Dr. Tom Cech is Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry at the �鶹ӰԺ and an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute where he was President from 2000-2009. He was the first Executive Director of the BioFrontiers Institute and is the Faculty Director of the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology Ph.D. Program at BioFrontiers. In the early 1980s, his lab’s discoveries that RNA can cut and join chemical bonds expanded the Central Dogma of Biology, which originally restricted RNA to just the role of passive, transient information carrier. This  opened up an entire world of exploration that has uncovered many more essential RNA functions and therapeutic opportunities. Dr. Cech has won many awards and prizes for his work, including the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, the National Medal of Science, the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, and elected membership in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. In addition to RNA, Dr. Cech loves the Colorado mountains where he enjoys running, hiking, and skiing.

The mRNA vaccines have put RNA in the spotlight, coming out from the shadow of the DNA double helix. But RNA is more than a passive messenger of the information stored in DNA. RNA functions as the “Swiss Army Knife” of biology, from powering the immortality enzyme telomerase, with its roles in aging, cancer, and genetic bone marrow failure, to powering the biotechnology revolution of CRISPR gene editing. Dr. Tom Cech, Nobel Prize laureate for his discoveries that RNA can act as a molecular scissors, will explain this previously hidden life of RNA and discuss where untapped potential may remain as we seek biotechnology-based approaches to improve global health and welfare.��

Dr. Leslie Leinwand is Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at the �鶹ӰԺ and a Professor with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is also a founder of the BioFrontiers Institute and its Chief Scientific Officer. In the early 1980s, her lab was the first to clone and map the human genes encoding the myosin heavy chains: the proteins responsible for heart and muscle contractions. This formed the basis for the next four decades of work, involving everything from animal models of genetic heart disease to the influence of sex, diet, and exercise on heart disease to pioneering technologies for studying disease-causing myosin mutants. All of this contributed to Dr. Leinwand co-founding the company MyoKardia, which developed the first FDA-approved drug for treating genetic heart disease. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association, and an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. When Dr. Leinwand is not in the lab she is often in the kitchen, where she is known as a formidable and creative chef.

Somewhat surprising to many people is that heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women. Yet most studies have focused only on men. In this talk I will discuss the large differences between male and female hearts in health and disease and how the sexes can respond differently to the same medicines. Did you know that women can have different symptoms than men having a heart attack, leading to missed diagnoses in women? Studies in women’s heart health are very important and we need to get the message out there to patients and doctors alike!��