University of South Carolina’s Caskey Lecture Oct. 27

October 14, 2008

Focuses on human diseases, disorders related to genetic variations

COLUMBIA, SC – October 14, 2008 – The University of South Carolina’s annual Caskey Lecture Oct. 27 will feature two of the nation’s leading researchers in biotechnology and medicine.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place 6 p.m. in the Lumpkin Auditorium in the Moore School of Business.

Dr. Morton Ann Gernsbacher, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, and Dr. Charles Lee, director of cytogenetics at the Harvard Cancer Center, will give separate talks related to the lecture, “Understanding Human Diseases and Disorders through Psychological and Genetic Variation: Implications for Autism and Schizophrenia.”

Gernsbacher is a Vilas Research Professor and the Sir Frederic C. Bartlett Professor of Psychology at Wisconsin. Among her numerous academic credentials, Gernsbacher received a Research Career Development Award and a Senior Research Fellowship from the National Institutes of Health, a Fulbright Research Scholar Award and a National Science Foundation Professional Opportunities for Women Award. Funded by grants from the NIH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and private foundations, Gernsbacher studies language comprehension and recently began research on autism. She earned her doctoral degree from the University of Texas at Austin and was on the University of Oregon faculty before moving to Michigan.

Lee, an associate professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School and an associate faculty member of the Broad Institute of Harvard and M.I.T., has grants from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, the National Human Genome Research Institute and the National Institute of General Health. His research in the field of genetic variations in the human genome received international attention in 2004. Lee is the recent recipient of the Ho-Am Prize in Medicine, referred to as the Korean Nobel Prize. He earned a doctoral degree from the University of Alberta and completed a clinical cytogenetic fellowship at Harvard Medical School.

The lecture series was established by Dr. C. Thomas Caskey, a Lancaster native and University of South Carolina alumnus, to address issues related to biotechnology in medicine. He is the CEO and president of Cogene Biotech Ventures Ltd. and a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.

The program is presented by the university’s College of Arts and Sciences. To learn more, visit http://www.cas.sc.edu/dean/caskey08.html.