Eric N. Olson, the pioneering molecular biologist, will present CCNY's 2024 Louis Levine-Gabriella de Beer Lecture.
Dr. Eric N. Olson, who led the discovery of the key transcription factors and mechanisms that control development and disease of cardiac and skeletal muscles, delivers the 2024 Louis Levine-Gabriella de Beer Lecture in Genetics at The City College of New York on Tuesday, April 9. His talk, “Correction of Muscle and Heart Disease by Gene Editing,” 5 – 8 p.m. in The Great Hall, located in CCNY’s Shepard Hall, is free and open to the public. Click here to register.
Olson is the founding Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He holds the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair, the Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research, and the Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects. He also serves as Director of the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science & Medicine and the Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Clinical Research Center.
Olson and his trainees discovered the key transcription factors and mechanisms that control development and disease of cardiac and skeletal muscles. These discoveries, at the interface of basic science and medicine, have profoundly influenced the understanding of the development and dysfunction of the cardiovascular and muscular systems. They’ve also provided new targets for therapeutic developments.
More recently, Olson has turned his attention to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a lethal degenerative disease of skeletal muscles and the heart, that has defied all therapies. His team conceived a gene editing method to correct a majority of DMD mutations and demonstrated the effectiveness of this method in human muscle cells and in mice and dogs with DMD.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He sits on the advisory boards of numerous organizations and has founded multiple biotechnology companies to translate the discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic.
About the Louis Levine-Gabriella de beer Lecture in Genetics
The Louis Levine-Gabriella de Beer Lecture in Genetics was established by Gabriella de Beer in memory of her husband, Professor Louis Levine. A graduate of CCNY, he earned his PhD in population genetics under the late great evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky at Columbia University. Professor Levine’s research centered on population studies of Drosophila and behavior genetics of mice. Human genetics and forensic genetics were among other areas to which he was devoted. Professor Levine taught in the Department of Biology and in the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, participated in bi-national research studies in Mexico, was Visiting Professor at the Technicon (the Israel Institute of Technology) in Israel, and in later years served as a consultant and expert witness in criminal cases involving DNA evidence. The aim of these annual lectures is to perpetuate Professor Louis Levine’s lifelong interest in the ever-expanding field of genetics.
About The City College of New York
Since 1847, The City College of New York has provided a high-quality and affordable education to generations of New Yorkers in a wide variety of disciplines. CCNY embraces its position at the forefront of social change. It is ranked #1 by the Harvard-based Opportunity Insights out of 369 selective public colleges in the United States on the overall mobility index. This measure reflects both access and outcomes, representing the likelihood that a student at CCNY can move up two or more income quintiles. Education research organization Degree Choices ranks CCNY #1 nationally among universities for economic return on investment. In addition, the Center for World University Rankings places CCNY in the top 1.8% of universities worldwide in terms of academic excellence. Labor analytics firm Emsi (now Lightcast) puts at $1.9 billion CCNY’s annual economic impact on the regional economy (5 boroughs and 5 adjacent counties) and quantifies the “for dollar” return on investment to students, taxpayers and society. At City College, more than 15,000 students pursue undergraduate and graduate degrees in eight schools and divisions, driven by significant funded research, creativity and scholarship. This year, CCNY launched its most expansive fundraising campaign, ever. The campaign, titled “Doing Remarkable Things Together” seeks to bring the College’s Foundation to more than $1 billion in total assets in support of the College mission. CCNY is as diverse, dynamic and visionary as New York City itself. View CCNY Media Kit.
Jay Mwamba
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jmwamba@ccny.cuny.edu