NIH Director’s Lecture

The Director’s Lectures feature leading researchers from around the globe. Nominated by scientists and interest groups throughout NIH, the speakers are specifically approved by the NIH Director. There are typically three NIH Director’s Lectures per year.

Neurobiology of Social Behavior Circuits

Catherine Dulac, Ph.D.
Harvard University

NIH Director’s Lecture

Social interactions are essential for animals to survive, reproduce, raise their young. Over the years, my lab has attempted to decipher the unique characteristics of social recognition: what are the unique cues that trigger distinct social behaviors, what is the nature and identity of social behavior circuits, how is the function of these circuits different in males and females and how are they modulated by the animal physiological status?

Towards a Deeper and More Human-centric Medicine

Eric Topol, M.D.
Scripps Research Institute

NIH Director’s Lecture

The subtype of AI, deep learning, has recently been used for a variety of medical applications, particularly image interpretation, across many disciplines. It is early, but these deep neural networks have considerable transformative potential to promote accuracy, streamline workflow, synthesize data for both clinicians and patients, promote patient autonomy, and greatly enhance the patient–clinician relationship. To date, prospective validation studies are quite limited, and we need to confront such vital issues of how AI can unintendedly worsen inequities and discrimination.

On the Design of Bionic Limbs: The Science of Tissue-Synthetic Interface

Hugh Herr, Ph.D.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

NIH Director’s Lecture

Professor Herr’s research program seeks to advance technologies that promise to accelerate the merging of body and machine, including device architectures that resemble the body’s musculoskeletal design, actuator technologies that behave like muscle, and control methodologies that exploit principles of biological movement. His methods encompass a diverse set of scientific and technological disciplines, from the science of biomechanics and biological movement control to the design of biomedical devices for the treatment of human physical disability.

Immune Checkpoint Blockade in Cancer Therapy: Historical Perspective, New Opportunities, and Prospects for Cures

James P. Allison, Ph.D.
MD Anderson Cancer Center, University of Texas

NIH Director’s Lecture

Dr. James Allison is the Chair of the Department of Immunology, the Vivian L. Smith Distinguished Chair in Immunology, Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Research, and the Executive Director of the Immunotherapy Platform at MD Anderson Cancer Center. He has spent a distinguished career studying the regulation of T cell responses and developing strategies for cancer immunotherapy. He earned the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, which he shared with Dr.

Deciphering cancer genomes and networks

Mona Singh, Ph.D.
Lewis Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University

NIH Director’s Lecture

Large-scale cancer genome sequencing consortia, such as TCGA, have provided a huge influx of somatic mutation data across large cohorts of patients. Understanding how these observed genetic alterations give rise to specific cancer phenotypes is a major aim of cancer genomics. This is challenging because numerous somatic mutations occur in each cancer genome, but only a subset are cancer-relevant; further, there is a high degree of mutational heterogeneity across individuals.

Brain Machine Interfaces: from Basic Science to Neuroprostheses and Neurological Recovery

Miguel A. Nicolelis, M.D., Ph.D.
Duke University Medical Center

NIH Director’s Lecture

“In this talk, I will describe how state-of-the-art research on brain–machine interfaces makes it possible for the brains of primates to interact directly and in a bi-directional way with mechanical, computational and virtual devices without any interference of the body’s muscles or sensory organs. I will review a series of recent experiments using real-time computational models to investigate how ensembles of neurons encode motor information.

Autoantigens and autoimmunity: a bedside to bench and back again story

Sandra L. Wolin, M.D., Ph.D.
National Cancer Institute

NIH Director’s Lecture

Noncoding RNAs play critical roles in the metabolism of all cells. The Wolin laboratory studies how noncoding RNAs function, how cells recognize and degrade defective noncoding RNAs, and how failure to degrade these RNAs affects cell function and contributes to human disease. Their studies revealed new mechanisms by which defective RNAs are targeted for degradation and new classes of noncoding RNAs. Most recently, their work has contributed to a novel theory for how the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus may be triggered in genetically susceptible individuals.

Cancer and aging: rival demons?

Judith Campisi, Ph.D.
Buck Institute for Research on Aging

NIH Director’s Lecture

Cancer and aging are intricately intertwined. Organisms with dividing cells are at substantial risk for developing cancer. Evolution “solved” the cancer problem by selecting for tumor-suppressive mechanisms, which protect these organisms from cancer—at least for the reproductively active portion of the life span. Beyond that portion of the life span, these mechanisms can drive pathologies associated with aging, including, ironically, cancer. For her lecture, Dr.

This page was last updated on Tuesday, August 10, 2021