Charles F. Stevens

Charles F. Stevens, a molecular neurobiologist whose research focuses on the organization and biochemical workings of the brain, will be the next speaker in the 2005 Senior Vice Chancellor’s Laureate Lecture Series on May 3.

His free public lecture, titled “Theory, Models, and Molecular Biology: Three Approaches to Systems Biology,” will begin at noon in Scaife Hall, Auditorium 6. An informal reception will follow in the lobby.

Stevens is based at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., where he is the Vincent J. Coates Professor of Molecular Neurobiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. He is also a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Stevens studies the mechanisms of synaptic transmission, the process by which intercellular communication (neurotransmission) occurs in the nervous system. Using imaging technology, he has determined that a neuron can deliver vesicles filled with neurotransmitters to the synapse in three ways: slow, rapid, and delayed release.

This unexpected finding has redefined the approach to studying synaptic transmission in the brain. His laboratory also studies the various mechanisms used by the central nervous system for short- and long-term regulation of synaptic strength. These mechanisms underlie virtually all neural processes.

The remaining speakers in the 2005 Laureate Lecture Series include:

June 3—Heiner Westphal, chief of the Laboratory of Mammalian Genes and Development at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Westphal’s lecture will be “Transcriptional Control of Early Mouse Development”;

Sept. 28—Michael Karin, professor of pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego. His lecture will be “The IKK Complex: At the Interface of Inflammation and Cancer”; and

Nov. 16—Jacqueline K. Barton, Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. “DNA Charge Transport Chemistry and Biology” is the title of her lecture.

All of the free public lectures will take place in Scaife Hall’s Auditorium 6. Evans’ lecture will begin at 3:30 p.m.; the others will begin at noon.

“The Laureate Lecture Series is designed to highlight the research of some of the nation’s most gifted, creative, and innovative scientists whose work will hold great interest for our investigators here at the University of Pittsburgh,” said Arthur S. Levine, Pitt senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and dean of the School of Medicine. “I am delighted to showcase their work here and equally delighted for these distinguished guests to meet with some of our own preeminent scientists, because great science does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it feeds upon an exchange of ideas, which is what we hope to promote with the Laureate Lectures.”