Endowed Lectureships

The Jack R. Cooper Lectureship was established in 1981 by Mohandas M. Kini, M.D. (1965) to honor Jack R. Cooper, Professor in the Pharmacology department from 1956 – 2019. Dr. Cooper was co-author of one of the foundational works in biochemical neuropharmacology “The Biochemical Basis of Neuropharmacology" and was a pioneer in studying the role of thiamine in the nervous system.

Bryan Roth, MD, PhD, Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor, Pharmacology, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, "AI Meets Drug Discovery"

Jean-Pierre Changeux, Pasteur Institute “Allosteric mechanism of signal transduction investigated with pentameric ligand-gated ion channels”

Baldomero Olivera, Distinguished Professor, Biology Department, University of Utah, "Conus Venom Peptides, Ion Channel Diversity and Constellation Pharmacology"

Leslie Vosshall, Rockefeller University "Human Sweat and Insect Repellents: The Molecular Biology of Mosquito Chemoreception"

Eric Gouaux, Ph.D., Senior Scientist, Vollum Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, “Atomic architecture and molecular mechanism of chemical synapse”

Charles Zuker, Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular, Biophysics/Neuroscience, Columbia University “From the tongue to the brain: the biology of mammalian taste”

Gail Mandel, Senior Scientist, Vollum Institute, Oregon Health & Science University, "The road to neuronal differentiation: REST stops along the way"

David Julius, Professor and Chair of Physiology, UCSF “From Peppers to Peppermints: Natural Products as Probes of the Pain Pathway”

David Clapham, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Professor of Neurobiology, Harvard Medical School

Marc Tessier-Lavigne, Genentech

Rodolfo Llinas, NYU School of Medicine “Of Neurons, Circuits and Cognition”

Dennis Choi, Professor and Head, Dept. of Neurology Washington University School of Medicine “Zinc and the Ischemic Brain”

Arnold D. Welch Lectureship was created in honor of Dr. Arnold D. Welch, chair of Pharmacology at Yale from 1953 to 1967. He was responsible for transforming the department into a modern center of research based on biochemical and structural principles that were applied to a broad spectrum of investigation from cancer chemotherapy to neurochemistry.

Olga Boudker, Ph.D., Professor of Physiology and Biophysics, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Weill Cornell Medical College, "Evolution of ion coupling in glutamate transporters"

Shiva Malek Ph.D., Global Head Oncology Disease Area, Novartis Institute of BioMedical Research, Inc. "New Frontiers in Cancer Therapy"

Eric Gouaux Ph.D., Vollum Institute at the Oregon Health & Science University, “Symmetry and Mechanism of Ionotropic Glutamate Receptors”

Andrew Plested, Ph.D., Humboldt University Berlin & Cluster of Excellence NeuroCare, “Slow AMPA Receptors”

Alexander Sobolevsky, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University, “Gating and Regulation of Ionotropic Glutamate Receptors”

Susumu Tomita, Ph.D., Department of Cell & Molecular Physiology and Neuroscience, Yale School of Medicine, “Discovery of Auxiliary Subunits of Ionotropic Neurotransmitter Receptors”

Mini symposium on "The Biology of Endocrine FGFs: From Basic Mechanisms to Therapeutic Opportunities" with Steven Kliewer, UT Southwestern Medical Center and David Mangelsdorf, UT Southwestern Medical Center

James Darnell, Rockefeller University “STAT3 in Cancer: Can it be inhibited?”

Barry Honig, HHMI, Ctr. for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, Columbia University “Relating Cellular to Molecular Specificity”

The Alan C. Sartorelli Lecture Fund was established on January 18, 1999 by William H. Prusoff, Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Scientist, to support a lecture series in the general areas of cancer and viral chemotherapy. Dr. Sartorelli served as Chairman of the Pharmacology Department from 1977 to 1984 and Director of the Yale Comprehensive Cancer Center from 1984 to 1993. He was a pioneer in cancer chemotherapy and was one of the first scientists to recognize the importance of matching the right drug to the right tumor, paving the way for personalized cancer care.

Celeste Simon, Ph.D., Arthur H. Rubenstein, MBBCh Professor, University of Pennsylvania, Department of Cell and Development Biology, Scientific Director Abramson Family Cancer Research Institute (AFCRI), Associate Director, Shared Resources, Abramson Cancer Center, "Can altered metabolism be exploited for therapeutic gain?"

Douglas Hanahan, Professor of Molecular Oncology, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Director, The Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research “Epigenetic microenvironmental determinants of tumor invasion and metastasis”

Nahum Sonenberg, Gilman Cheney Professor, McGill University, Department of Biochemistry and Goodman Cancer Research Centre “Translational control of cancer by eIF4E via the mTOR and MAPK pathways”

Joan Brugge, Harvard Medical School “Extracellular Matrix Control of Normal and Tumor Cell Survival”

John Mendelsohn, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center “Growth Factor Receptor Blockade as Anti-cancer Therapy”

Daniel Von Hoff, Professor and Director, Arizona Cancer Center “Clinomics – The Practice of Oncogenomics at the Bedside”

The Yung-Chi Cheng Lecture was established in 1999 by William H. Prusoff Ph.D. to support lectures in cancer and viral chemotherapy. The lectureship honors Yung-Chi Cheng, Ph.D., the Henry Bronson Professor of Pharmacology, who as a postdoc in the laboratory of Bill Prusoff, co-developed the Cheng-Prusoff equation, a key equation in pharmacology. Since then, Dr. Cheng has made major contributions to the development of drugs for cancer and viral diseases derived from traditional Chinese medicines.

Xin-Sheng Yao, Ph.D, Institute of TCM and Natural Products, Jinan University “The Opportunities and Challenges Facing the Globalization of Chinese Medicine”

Liping Zhao, Ph.D., Professor of Microbiology Director for Laboratory of Molecular Microbial Ecology and Ecogenomics School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology Director for Laboratory of Nutritional Systems Biology Shanghai Center for systems Biomedicine Shanghai Jiao tong University “Gut microbiota-targeted dietary alleviation of human genetic obesity”

Li Ping, M.D., Ph.D. Chairman, Key Lab of Arthritis and Rheumatoid Diseases, Director, Department of Pharmacology China-Japan Friendship Hospital "Treatment of Diabetic Nephropathy by Herbal Medicine"

Jun Xu, Ph.D. Professor of Medicinal Chemistry & CADD, Founding Director of Research Center for Drug Discovery "Chemomics and Polypharmacological Networks for TCM"

Enzo Tramontano, Ph.D., Chair of the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Cagliari, “HIV-1 Ribonuclease H inhibitors: multiple strategies for a still unexplored target”

Peter Palese, Ph.D. (Sartorelli, host), Professor and Chairman, Dept. of Microbiology Mount Sinai School of Medicine “The Interferon Antagonist of Influenza Viruses: Novel Vaccine and Antiviral Approaches”

The Tai-Shun Lin Memorial Fund was created in 1998 by William H. Prusoff, Ph.D. to support a lecture series in honor of his colleague Tai-Shun Lin, Ph.D., with whom he developed the antiviral drug d4T for the treatment of AIDS.

Susan Taylor, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, Senior Fellow, San Diego Supercomputer Center Professor, Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, "New Frontiers in PKA Signaling"

Gerard Karsenty, Paul A. Marks Professor and Chair Department of Genetics and Development, Columbia University Medical School, “The impact of bone on whole organism physiology”

Ruedi Aebersold, Professor and Chair of Molecular Systems Biology, Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zurich and Faculty of Science University of Zurich, “The proteotype model: Conceptual basis and implementation”

Michael Eck, Dept of Cancer Biology, Dana Farber Cancer Institute "Tyrosine kinase regulation and dysregulation: Structural and mechanistic studies of FAK and EGFR"