Walker L. Cisler
Memorial Lecture Series

Gil Omenn, MD, PhD

Dr. Gilbert S. Omenn discussed the concept of “grand challenges” and how it has proven to be a powerful tool to stimulate critical discoveries, create new technologies, and attract public attention to make policy decisions that enhance investment and accelerate innovation. Referencing the “23 Puzzles” given by David Hilbert at the 1900 lecture in Paris, Omenn will discuss the history of issuing challenges and the resulting ways that finding solutions can move society and policy forward. Omenn examined the growth in the space program, astrophysics, computer sciences, life sciences, economic development, and multiple other fields and will call upon the audience to formulate bold challenge statements for their own fields of science, technology, and innovation.

Dr. Sara A. Pozzi

Dr. Sara Pozzi discussed the challenges of nuclear proliferation and the recent advances in science and technology that contribute to stopping the spread of overt and covert nuclear weapons programs. Part of her timely lecture will include findings from the Consortium for Verification Technology, a consortium of 12 universities and nine national laboratories working together on these issues. She described the Consortium’s studies on the fundamental emissions from nuclear fission, and the development of new detection systems for nuclear materials detection, localization, and characterization. Using the recent nuclear test events in North Korea, Dr. Pozzi also explored the detection and characterization of nuclear explosions. Watch the 2019 lecture here.

Dr. Peter Walter

Dr. Peter Walter discussed how disappointments in one’s research can lead to unexpected outcomes of miraculous good fortune. Detailing one such journey, he summarized his and his lab’s research on the Unfolded Protein Response and their discovery of the Integrated Stress Response InhiBitor molecule. Their work has the potential to reverse some of the cognitive deficits caused by traumatic brain injury and such diseases as Alzheimer’s and diabetes.

Dr. Walter has received many honors for his groundbreaking research, including the Eli Lilly Award, Passano Award, Wiley Prize, Stein & Moore Award, Gairdner Award, E.B. Wilson Medal, Otto Warburg Medal, Jung Prize, Ehrlich and Darmstaedter Prize, Shaw Prize, Lasker Award, Vilcek Prize, and Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences.

Mark Schlissel

From the Discovery of DNA to the Modification of the Human Genome:
How Basic Science Fuels Disease Prevention, Diagnosis, and Treatment.
As president of the University of Michigan and the first physician-scientist ever to lead the institution, Dr. Mark Schlissel has an accomplished career in teaching, medical research, and academic administration. His research has focused on the developmental biology of B lymphocytes, the cell type in the immune system that secretes antibodies.

His work has contributed to a detailed understanding of genetic factors involved in the production of antibodies and how mistakes in that process can lead to leukemia and lymphoma. Schlissel is the author or co-author of over 100 scientific papers.

Dr. Eva Feldman

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a devastating neurodegenerative disorder in which the loss of large nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord produces progressive weakness and eventually death. In the decades since the approval of riluzole, the only FDA approved medication to moderately slow progression of ALS by 2 months, no new therapies have arisen to alter the course of the disease. Stem cells have emerged as an attractive option in treating ALS. While various stem cell types are being evaluated in preclinical and early clinical applications, we have used spinal cord neural progenitor stem cells in two FDA approved clinical trials to treat ALS. In both the Phase I and II clinical trials, ALS subjects received direct transplantation of stem cells into different areas of their spinal cord. Although these trials were primarily conducted to evaluate the safety of this approach, clinical progression was monitored and we have preliminary insight into the beneficial therapeutic role of stem cell therapy in ALS disease progression. Overall, results demonstrate that intraspinal transplantation of stem cells in ALS patients is feasible and well-tolerated and the therapeutic signal warrants another larger FDA trial which will begin in 2016. This marks a new era for stem cell therapy and for our treatment of ALS.

Trachette Jackson

Mathematical biology, the mathematical modeling of phenomena in the biomedical sciences, is one of the fastest growing areas in applied mathematics. In this introduction to the field, Trachette Jackson highlights its historical successes and showcases ways in which mathematics and high-powered computing are being used to tackle some of the biggest biological challenges facing our world today.

Jackson is an award-winning teacher scholar whose research in mathematical oncology has received international attention. In 2003, she became the second African American woman to receive the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Research Award in Mathematics. The main focus of Dr. Jackson’s research is combining mathematical modeling, numerical simulation, and in vivo tumor vascularization experimentation to gain a deeper understanding of tumor growth and vascular structure at the molecular, cellular, and tissue levels.

George Djorgovski

The growing capacity of computers to collect and store data has been transforming science, leading to a new era in which scientific databases are primary research tools. The virtualization of these databases gives any person who has a computer and Internet connection the opportunity to perform scientific research. This development, however, has come with a challenge: how do you analyze extremely large scientific databases and turn that data into knowledge and scientific discoveries?

S. George Djorgovski is at the forefront of this new data-intensive and computationally enabled paradigm of science. One of the founders of the Virtual Observatory concept and the emerging field of astroinformatics, he has served as chairman of the U.S. National Virtual Observatory’s science definition team. Djorgovski will discuss how big data and data virtualization are revolutionizing science and scholarship in the 21st century.

Dr. Leigh Hochberg

Sending emails, playing computer games, drinking coffee. These activities have been impossible for people who are “locked in” their bodies – awake and alert, but unable to move or communicate due to brainstem injuries, strokes, or illnesses like ALS. Until now. Leigh R. Hochberg and his fellow researchers are developing brain-machine interfaces that allow paralyzed people to accomplish these feats and much more.

Hochberg and his colleagues found that even though the pathways connecting the brain to the rest of the body, such as the spinal cord, have been broken, the brain can still send the signals that control movement. They developed BrainGate, a neural interface system that plugs into the brain, picks up those signals, and sends them to a computer that translates them into moving a cursor or controlling a computer keyboard or robot arm. Paralyzed people can literally move objects by thinking about them!

Dr. Garrison Cottrell

How does the activity in our brain create the mind? One way to understand the mind is to build computer models that “do the same things people do.” Garrison W. Cottrell investigates this question in the context of how we see: how do we recognize faces, facial expressions, and objects? This seems so simple – we look, we see! But it isn’t that simple, something you discover if you try to write a computer program that can automatically label faces and objects with their names. Prof. Cottrell will described his computer models of how we see, and how our brains can often fool us about what we see. Cottrell, who has been working on neural network models of mental processes for over 30 years, describes the field of cognitive science and how building working models of mental processes can provide insights into how the mind works. His research group, Gary’s Unbelievable Research Unit (GURU), focuses on how the visual system might learn representations of the world, how our attention is drawn to different objects in our visual field, and how we use these processes to recognize objects.

Dr. Diandra Leslie-Pelecky

A group of racecars piloted by the best drivers in NASCAR are turning a corner. Without warning, one of the cars suddenly hits the outside wall. There were no engine failures, no flat tires, and none of the cars touched …so what happened? Physics professor and author of The Physics of NASCAR, Diandra Leslie-Pelecky details what it takes to make racecars faster and safer, and why driving a stock car is much harder than you might think.

Mark Schlissel

The nighttime symphony of croaking frogs and toads is becoming a thing of the past and Tyrone Hayes, an internationally recognized biologist, knows why. His research on atrazine, a widely used pesticide found in groundwater, local streams, and ponds, has revealed that the product is a potent endocrine disrupter that chemically castrates and feminizes exposed male amphibians. Atrazine also causes neural damage and hyperactivity and induces a hormonal stress response that leads to retarded growth and immune suppression, resulting in increased disease and mortality rates.

Dr. Eric J. Heller

Heller has made groundbreaking theoretical contributions in quantum dynamics, spectroscopy, semiclassical approximations, and condensed matter physics. He is perhaps best known for his seminal work on the time-domain wavepacket approach to molecular spectroscopy, and on the quantum mechanics of classically chaotic systems. More recently Heller has used his deep understanding of quantum mechanics to explain fascinating coherence effects in quantum corrals and quantum dots, as well as the beautiful "branched and fringed electron flow" in semiconductor heterostructures, discovered experimentally by Bob Westervelt's group at Harvard.

John Noble Wilford

Since joining the New York Times as a science news reporter in 1965, Wilford has committed to sharing this informed wonder with his readers. As a journalist, he has covered cutting-edge technology and scientific breakthroughs, including space exploration, but also has witnessed the tragic consequences of such endeavors, like the Challenger space shuttle explosion. Throughout his career, Wilford has gained not only an appreciation for science and technology, but a curiosity.

Dr. Alan Dale Poling

Dr. Poling is a member of the behavior analysis program and director of the behavioral pharmacology laboratory at Western Michigan University. He has been a member of the WMU faculty in the Department of Psychology since 1977 and served as interim associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from February 2003-February 2004. His primary research interests are psychopharmacology and behavior analysis, and his work has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Education. He was named a WMU Distinguished Faculty Scholar in 1996. Poling earned his bachelor's degree from Alderson-Broaddus College in 1972, his master's degree from West Virginia University in 1974 and his doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota in 1977. Poling replaced Dr. Jay Wood, whose appointment as associate vice president for academic affairs was also approved by the board Feb. 27.

Dr. L. Dennis Smith

Dr. Smith served at Indiana University, Purdue University, Woods Hole Marine Biology Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, University of California at Irvine, and as president of the University of Nebraska (1994–2004). Among his awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship (1987) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award (2002). In a talk entitled, "The Science, Promise, and Politics of Embryonic Stem Cell Research," Dr. Smith shared his experiences as a very visible participant in public discussions about medical necessity, academic freedom, the ethics of using embryonic stem cells, public funding, and related issues. He also talked about the necessity of finding formal ways to involve the larger society in developing guidelines for the ethical conduct of future biomedical research.

Dr. Robert Devaney

Professor of mathematics at Boston University and an expert in dynamical systems theory, Dr. Devaney received the Award for Distinguished University Teaching from the Northeastern section of the Mathematical Association of America in 1994. He produced the Mandelbrot Set Explorer, an online, interactive series of explorations designed to teach students at all levels about the mathematics behind the interesting images known as the Mandelbrot and Julia sets. In his lecture entitled "Chaos Games and Fractal Images" he described the beautiful images that arise from the “chaos game” and showed how the simple steps of this game produce the intricate images known as fractals. He also touched on the applications of this technique used in data compression as well as in Hollywood.

Dr. Ursula Goodenough

Dr. Ursula Goodenough is a renowned cell biologist, researcher and author who shared experiences of her travels in Tibet where she taught cell biology to exiled Tibetan monks that had no previous scientific education. Just prior to this, she had accepted an invitation to teach the Dalai Lama the principles of molecular evolution. She spoke of these experiences and how they resonated with her own deeply held beliefs about the relationship between spirituality and science. These experiences strengthened her conviction that the best way to teach science is through narrative - telling the science in story, a method she very effectively illustrated in this lecture.

Dr. Isabel Hawkins

Dr. Isabel Hawkins, Director of the Center for Science Education at the University of California, Berkley, Space Sciences Laboratory (SSL). Through examples of education and outreach programs with which she is actively involved, she shared her research experiences which ultimately led to a better understanding of the effects of the active sun, the sun-earth connection and "space weather".

Dr. Dudley R. Herschbach

Dr. Herschbach’s lecture was modeled around his reflections in teaching and learning science. He was a charismatic speaker who emphasized the critical role that individual teachers played in his education. Dr. Herschbach is renowned for his studies on energy redistribution and its exchange in chemical reactions.

Dr. Francisco J. Ayala

Dr. Ayala, a world-renowned molecular geneticist and former priest, gave a fascinating talk to reveal how teachings in both evolution and religion can exist harmoniously. He is extremely emphatic about promoting the philosophical compatibility of scientific knowledge and methods and religious faith and has been described as the Renaissance man of evolutionary biology.

Dr. Rodger W. Bybee

Dr. Bybee has been active in education for more than 30 years and has received awards for Leader of American Education and Outstanding Educator in America. Previously he served as principal investigator for several National Science Foundation (NSF) programs implemented in elementary, middle and high schools. His talk addressed how to effectively achieve scientific literacy and the challenges of content for the school curriculum.

Dr. Lillian C. McDermott

Dr. McDermott is a recipient of the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Robert A. Millikan Lecture Award for “notable and creative contributions to the teaching of physics.” Under her direction, the Physics Education Group at the University of Washington conducted research on the learning and teaching of physics. In her lecture, she used examples from this research to illustrate the frequent mismatch between how science is taught and how students learn.

Dr. Uri Treisman

Dr. Treisman, a MacArthur Fellow and Dana Award winner gave a talk on how schools at all levels can create the conditions for mathematics and science excellence in diverse student populations. His talk grew out of the highly successful programs he developed to improve minority achievement in mathematics and the sciences and described the special role that faculty members play in these programs.

Dr. Leon Lederman

Dr. Leon Lederman was LTU's inaugural Walker Cisler lecturer in 1995. Although he was awarded the 1988 Nobel Prize for his work in physics, his talk was based on his pioneering work in reforming science education in the Chicago schools. He presented his vision of new ways to teach science to a rapt audience.