Nobel laureate J. Michael Bishop, chancellor of UC San Francisco and a leading cancer researcher, will give a public talk at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on Thursday, April 17. Bishop's talk, entitled "Cancer: The Rise of the Genetic Paradigm," will start at 4 p.m. in the Stage Room at the Colleges Nine/Ten Dining Commons. There will be a reception immediately after the lecture.
Bishop's talk is the third annual Sinsheimer Distinguished Lecture in Biology, sponsored this year by UCSC's Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology. The event is free and open to the public. Designated parking for this event is in the North Residential Lot, with shuttle service to the event site.
Bishop is one of the world's foremost medical researchers and an award-winning teacher. He shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in medicine/physiology with Harold Varmus, now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. They won the award for discovering that normal cells contain genes that can cause cancer if they malfunction. Their discovery is widely credited with sparking a revolution in cancer research.
Bishop directs the G. W. Hooper Research Foundation at UCSF, which conducts multidisciplinary research on human disease. He maintains an active research lab with a focus on the molecular basis of cancer. His research aims to determine how normal cells govern their replication and why cancer cells do not.
A member of the UCSF faculty since 1968, Bishop has twice received the campus's Kaiser Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1994, he was appointed a University Professor, the highest honor UC can bestow on a professor in recognition of superior scholarship and teaching.
Bishop's many honors and awards include the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Armand Hammer Cancer Prize, and the Award for Distinguished Research in the Biomedical Sciences from the American Association of Medical Colleges. He is a member of several professional and honorary societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is coauthor of three books and nearly 400 scientific papers, publications, and reviews.
The Sinsheimer Distinguished Lectureship in Biology is supported by an endowment from UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Emeritus Robert L. Sinsheimer and his wife, Karen. Robert Sinsheimer, who was chancellor from 1977 to 1987, is a renowned molecular biologist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hosting of the annual lecture alternates between the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology.
For more information about the lecture, contact the University Events Office at (831) 459-1438.
