WALS 2023–2024 Season: A Sneak Peek

BY DIANA GOMEZ, OD

NIH’s highest-profile lecture program, the NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series (WALS), launches its 2023–2024 season on September 13. Most lectures will be held in person on Wednesdays at 2 p.m. ET in Lipsett Amphitheater in Building 10. All events will be broadcast and archived via NIH VideoCast.

In a prelude to the upcoming season, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the WALS Office will co-sponsor the annual John Daly Lecture on September 6. Speaking is Bryan Roth, the Michael Hooker Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine (Chapel Hill, North Carolina). Roth is recognized for his discoveries and inventions in the general areas of molecular pharmacology, GPCR structure and function, and synthetic neurobiology.

The William E. Paul Lecture presented by Diane Mathis from Harvard Medical School (Boston, Massachusetts) kicks off the official WALS season on September 13. The Mathis lab studies T-cell differentiation, tolerance and autoimmunity, and translating mechanistic studies on mouse models to normal and diseased states in humans.

Next up is the annual G. Burroughs Mider Lecture by Dale Sandler, Chief of the NIEHS Epidemiology Branch, on September 20, in the heart of NIH Research Festival week.

Rounding out the first month of the WALS season will be Heran Darwin, professor in the Department of Microbiology of New York University Langone Health (New York), on September 27. Darwin’s lab is studying how Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis, has become arguably the most successful pathogen on earth.

This next season is special as we adjust to the post-pandemic environment. We are bringing back the trainee lunch with the speakers and the post-lecture receptions. Lunches are limited to five to six trainees, so please contact the WALS Office if you’re interested in attending.

Each WALS season includes some of the best-known names in biomedical and behavioral science to keep NIH investigators abreast of the latest and most important research being conducted in the United States and beyond. All speakers are nominated by the NIH community.