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Cornell’s Barbara McClintock Life Sciences Lecture Series is among the most distinguished lecture series at the university. Established in 2018, the Barbara McClintock Life Sciences Lecture Series brings together colleagues from the natural, physical, and computer sciences and engineering communities in a single forum. Previously known as the Biology without Borders series, established in 2012, the lectures focus on identifying and showcasing life scientists whose research cuts across traditional disciplinary boundaries. This lecture series is committed to interdisciplinarity, inclusiveness, and the highest quality of science.

Each academic year, four distinguished scientists (two per semester) are invited to present Life Sciences Lectures and participate in workshops and discussion groups. These lectures inform, inspire, and stimulate the Cornell community to engage in interdisciplinary research. Presenters are leaders in their fields. They publish groundbreaking research, make world-changing discoveries, and achieve novel applications for the betterment of society.

The Barbara McClintock Life Sciences Lecture Series is made possible through funds from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation.

Events

In “A Million Shades of Green,” Anne Osbourn, professor and group leader at the John Innes Centre, will discuss ways to harness metabolic diversity in plants for food and health applications. Osbourn investigates natural product biosynthesis in plants. Her discovery that the genes for many of these pathways are organized in clusters like “beads on a string” in plant genomes has greatly accelerated the ability to find new pathways and chemistries of potential importance for the development of drugs and other useful compounds. Lecture 4:00 p.m.; cookies & coffee 3:30 p.m.

Michelle Monje, the Milan Gambhir Professor in Pediatric Neuro-Oncology and a professor of neurology at Stanford University and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, will deliver the lecture, “Neuron-Glial Interactions in Health and Disease: From Cognition to Cancer.” Dr. Monje works at the intersection of neuroscience and brain cancer biology, with a particular focus on mechanisms and consequences of neuron-glial interactions in health, glial dysfunction in neurological disease and neuron-glial interactions in malignant glioma. Lecture 4 p.m.; cookies & coffee 3:30 p.m.; post-lecture reception 5 p.m.