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The Kensal E. van Holde Lectureship in Physiology
7/16/09 - 4:00 PM, Lillie Auditorium
Reception will take place in the Meigs Room following the lecture
"Adhesion and Polarity in Migration Cells"
Alan "Rick" Horwitz, University of Virginia
“Rick” Horwitz is the Harrison Distinguished Professor of Cell Biology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and Director of the Cell Migration Consortium. He trained in chemistry, biophysics and magnetic resonance at UW Madison, (BA), Stanford, (PhD) and UC Berkeley (post doc). However, his interests quickly turned to cell adhesion and then to cell migration, areas that he has helped to pioneer. Prior to his appointment at the University of Virginia, he was a professor in the Department of Biophysics and Biochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine and Head of the Department of Cell and Structural Biology at the University of Illinois. His present research interests include adhesion and cytoskeletal function, organization and regulation during migration, the mechanism of dendritic spine morphogenesis and synapse formation in hippocampal neurons, and the development and use of quantitative imaging modalities.
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Kensal E. van Holde received both B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin. Trained as a physical chemist, his early interests lay in the synthetic polymer field, which led to initial employment in industry. Dr. van Holde returned to academia in 1957, as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois. There he met J. Woodland Hastings, who asked him to join the faculty of the MBL Physiology course in 1962. He served as a course faculty member for five years, and later as course director from 1977 to 1981.
His experiences in the Physiology course marked a turning point in Dr. van Holde’s career. The enthusiasm of the staff and students at the MBL fired an excitement for biological research that dominated all of his subsequent work. Indeed, the two major themes of his career—the structure and function of oxygen transport proteins, and the fine structure of chromatin—both had their seeds in work conducted at the MBL.
This fascination with the MBL and a love for Woods Hole has led the van Holde family to return nearly every summer for more than 40 years. During that time Dr. van Holde has served on both the Board of Trustees and Executive Committee of the MBL. He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
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