Short Courses

“Pipettes to Patients: Translational Methods in Biomedical Sciences”

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

• Introductory Lecture, Jason Spence, Ph.D.

• Professor of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan

• “Using Lung Organoids and Patient Tissue to Understand How Inflammatory Signaling Shapes the Transcriptional and Cellular Architecture of the Early Postnatal Lung”

• 3:00 PM

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Tuesday, October 6, 2026

• Dan Huh, Ph.D.

• Professor of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania

• “Microengineered Mimicry of Human Health and Disease”

• 3:00 PM

• West Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Tuesday, October 27, 2026

• Paul Macklin, Ph.D.

• Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering (ISE) at Indiana University (IU) in Bloomington

• “A Human-Interpretable Model Language for Intuitive Development of Cancer Simulations, with Application to Personalized Medicine”

• 3:00 PM

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Tuesday, November 10, 2026

• David Tuveson, M.D., Ph.D.

• Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Cancer Center and the Chief Scientist for the Lustgarten Foundation

• “Pancreatic Cancer Biology and Therapy”

• 3:00 PM

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Friday, November 20, 2026

• Mingxia Gu, M.D., Ph.D.

• Associate Professor, Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, Broad Stem Cell Research Center 

• “Engineering Vascularized Organoids: Decoding Human Development and Disease in a Dish”

• 3:00 PM

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

“Safeguarding the Germline: Mechanisms of Regulation and Repair in Meiosis”

Tuesday, January 20, 2026

• Agnieszka Lukaszewicz, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Human Genetics, University of Michigan Medical School

• Introductory Lecture: "Germline Mutagenesis by Nonhomologous End Joining"

• 3:00 p.m.

• West Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Tuesday, February 10, 2026

• Luke Berchowitz, PhD, Associate Professor of Genetics and Development, Taub Institute for Research on Alzheimer’s Disease and the Aging Brain, Columbia University Irving Medical Center

• "The Dual Lives of Pathogenic Structures: From Functional Amyloids to Domesticated Capsids”

• 3:00 p.m.

• West Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Tuesday, March 17, 2026

• Florencia Pratto, PhD, Stadtman Tenure-Track Investigator, Acting Section Chief: Section on Replication and Recombination in the Mammalian Germline, Genetics & Biochemistry Branch, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases

• "Multilayered Control of Recombination and Diversity in the Mammalian Germline"

• 3:00 p.m.

• West Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

• Francesca Cole, PhD, Director of Trainee Transitions and Associate Professor, Department of Epigenetics and Molecular Carcinogenesis, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

• "Age-Dependent Alterations in DNA Repair Cause Chromosome Mis-Segregation in Meiosis"

• 3:00 p.m.

• West Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

Tuesday, April 7, 2026

• Anne Villeneuve, PhD, Berthold and Belle N. Guggenhime Professor and Professor of Developmental Biology and Genetics, Department of Developmental Biology, Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine

• "Illuminating Mechanisms of Genome Inheritance"

• 3:00 p.m.

• West Lecture Hall, Med Sci 2

“Through the Looking Glass: Imaging-Based Innovation in Biomedical Science”
Monday, September 29, 2025

• Introductory Lecture, Sethu Pitchiaya, Ph.D.

• Assistant Professor of Urology and Pathology, University of Michigan

• “From Seeing to Believing: Imaging and Integrative Analysis Across Biological Scales”

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Monday, October 6, 2025

• Rong Fan, Ph.D.

• Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University

• “Ushering in a New Era of Human Biology Driven by Novel Spatial Multi-Omics”

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Monday, November 3, 2025

• Christopher Chen, M.D., Ph.D.

• Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering, Boston University

• “Mechanobiology of Tissue Form and Function: Seeing the Invisible Forces”

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Monday, November 10, 2025

• Bo Huang, Ph.D.

• Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California, San Francisco

• “The Cell Biology of Biomolecular Co-Condensates”

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Monday, November 17, 2025

• Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, Ph.D.

• Senior Group Leader and Head of 4D Cellular Physiology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Research Campus 

• “Exploring Life’s Structures Across Scales Through Imaging”

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

The Nature of Nurture: How Environmental Factors Shape the Epigenome and Evolution

<archived schedule>

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

• Lydia Freddolino, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Departments of Biological Chemistry and Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics, University of Michigan Medical School

• Introductory Lecture: "Thinking Without Brains: How Bacteria Predict the Future and Remember the Past"

• 3:00 p.m.

• Med Sci II - West Lecture Hall

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

• Patrick Bradley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, The Ohio State University

• "Harnessing Metagenomics, Phylogenetics, and Physiology to Link Gut Microbial Genotypes to Phenotypes"

• 3:00 p.m.

• Med Sci II - West Lecture Hall

Tuesday, March 11, 2025

• Genevieve Wojcik, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

• "Global Representation, Local Context: An Epidemiological Perspective on Ancestry and Genetic Risk"

• 3:00 p.m.

• Med Sci II - West Lecture Hall

Tuesday, April 1, 2025

• Amy S.Y. Lee, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Cell Biology, Harvard Medical School, Center of Immunology & Virology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

• "Evolution of Biological Novelty Through Specialization of mRNA Translation"

• 3:00 p.m.

• Med Sci II - West Lecture Hall

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

• Meaghan Jones, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Max Rady College of Medicine, University of Manitoba

• "Long Term Regulation of DNA Methylation and Chromatin Accessibility by Early Life Exposure to Inhaled Pollution"

• 3:00 p.m.

• Med Sci II - West Lecture Hall

AI in Action: Applications in Cellular and Molecular Biology

Tuesday, October 1, 2024

• Sriram Chandrasekaran, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan

• Introductory Lecture: "Drug Discovery Using Systems Biology and Mechanistic AI"

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

• Zijun (Frank) Zhang, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Division of Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

• "Fine-Tuning Language Models for Genome Understanding"

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

• David Shackelford, Ph.D., Professor, Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, University of California Los Angeles

• "Spatial Mapping of Organelle Architecture and Communication in Lung Cancer"

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

• Gaudenz Danuser, Ph.D., Professor, Department of Bioinformatics, UT Southwestern Medical Center

• "Learning Cellular Mechanisms by Interpretable AI"

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

• Feng Guo, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Intelligent Systems Engineering, Indiana University Bloomington

• "Intersection of Brain Organoid, AI, and Medicine”"

• 3:00 p.m.

• South Lecture Hall, Med Sci II

As the Ribonucleotide Turns: How Cells Exert Control, Ride Out Genomic Instability, and Gain Immunity

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

• Lyle Simmons, Ph.D., Professor, Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, University of Michigan

• Introductory Lecture: "Genome Instability Caused by Persistent RNA-DNA Hybrid Formation"

• 3:00 p.m., Med Sci 2 - West Lecture Hall

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

• Francesca Storici, Ph.D., Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Education, School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

• "RNA's Transformative Impact: Shaping DNA Metabolism in the Genome"

• 3:00 p.m., Med Sci 2 - West Lecture Hall

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

• Hai Dang Nguyen, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology, University of Minnesota

• "Understanding and Targeting R-Loop Response Pathways in Cancers"

• 3:00 p.m., Med Sci 2 - West Lecture Hall

Tuesday, April 2, 2024

• Nicholas Ingolia, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California, Berkeley

• "Global Analysis of the Networks Controlling mRNA Translation and Decay"

• 3:00 p.m., Med Sci 1 - 3330 Auditorium

Tuesday, April 9, 2024

• Wendy V. Gilbert, Ph.D., Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, School of Medicine, Yale University

• "Decoding the Untranslated to Engineer Next-Generation mRNA Medicines"

• 3:00 p.m., Med Sci 2 - West Lecture Hall