SPEAKERS, DISCUSSANTS, CHAIRS

keynote Speakers

Barbara Alving, M.D.
Director, National Center for Research Resources


Barbara Alving

Dr. Alving is the Director of the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) at the National Institutes of Health. NCRR provides laboratory scientists and clinical researchers with the environments and tools they need to understand, detect, treat, and prevent a wide range of common and rare diseases.

Dr. Alving earned her medical degree cum laude from Georgetown University School of Medicine, where she also completed an internship in internal medicine. She received her residency training in internal medicine at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital, followed by a fellowship in hematology. Dr. Alving then became a research investigator in the Division of Blood and Blood Products at the Food and Drug Administration. In 1980, she joined the Department of Hematology at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research and became Chief of the Department in 1992. She left the Army at the rank of Colonel in 1996 to become the Director of the Medical Oncology/Hematology section at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. In 1999, she joined the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), serving as the Director of the extramural Division of Blood Diseases and Resources until becoming the Deputy Director of the Institute in September 2001. From September 2003 until February 1, 2005, she served as the Acting Director of NHLBI. In March 2005 she became the Acting Director of NCRR and was named Director in April 2007.

Dr. Alving is a Professor of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, a Master in the American College of Physicians, a former member of the subcommittee on Hematology of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and a previous member of the FDA Blood Products Advisory Committee. She is a co-inventor on two patents, has edited three books, and has published more than 100 papers in the areas of thrombosis and hemostasis.

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, National Human Genome Research Institute

Francis Collins

Dr. Collins is the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). He led the successful effort to complete Human Genome Project (HGP), a complex multidisciplinary scientific enterprise directed at mapping and sequencing all of the human DNA, and determining aspects of its function. A working draft of the human genome sequence was announced in June of 2000, an initial analysis was published in February of 2001, and a high-quality, reference sequence was completed in April 2003. From the outset, the project ran ahead of schedule and under budget, and all the data is now available to the scientific community without restrictions on access or use.

Dr. Collins received a B.S. from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale University, and an M.D. from the University of North Carolina. Following a fellowship in Human Genetics at Yale, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he remained until moving to NIH in 1993. His research has led to the identification of genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease and Hutchison-Gilford progeria syndrome. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.

banquet speaker

Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.
Director, Institute of Human Origins

Human Evolution: A View from Africa

Donald Johanson

For famed paleoanthropologist, Don Johanson, understanding who we are is not just a matter of idle curiosity. It is a matter of survival for our own species as well as for the millions of other species with whom we share the earth.

Many consider Johanson to be among the most important and accomplished paleoanthropologists of our time. Over the course of his illustrious career he has produced some of the field's groundbreaking discoveries, including the most widely known and thoroughly studied fossil find of the 20th Century--the Lucy skeleton.

Since Darwin first posed the theory of evolution in his 1859 publication, On The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, scientists have speculated about humankind's place in nature. Darwin postulated that not only was the human species a product of the evolutionary process, but deep in the geological past, we actually shared a common ancestor with the African apes.

Although the 20th Century has been peppered with important fossil hominid finds from both eastern and southern Africa, it was Dr. Johanson's 1974 discovery of a 3.2 million-year-old hominid fossil in Ethiopia that added a crucial link. Lucy, as the skeleton was called, prompted on-going debate and major revisions in our knowledge and understanding of the human evolutionary past. The skeleton possessed an intriguing mixture of ape-like features such as a projecting face and small brain, but also characteristics we consider human such as upright walking. Lucy continues to be a diadem in the crown of hominid fossils and serves as an important touchstone for all subsequent discoveries.

In the 32 years since Johanson earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, he has led field explorations in Ethiopia, Tanzania, and the Middle East, and effectively reached across a broad range of media platforms--hosting and narrating the Emmy nominated PBS/NOVA series In Search of Human Origins, co-authoring eight books, and lecturing at universities, corporations, and public forums--to share his findings and stimulate healthy debate. Driven by a notion that we cannot fully grasp who we are and where we are headed as a species until we have a more complete knowledge of our evolutionary roots, Johanson founded and directs the Institute of Human Origins, a human-evolution think tank. An Honorary Board Member of the Explorers Club and a Fellow in the Royal Geographical Society, he also serves as the Virginia M. Ullman Chair in Human Origins at Arizona State University, where he teaches.

Johanson encourages us to delve deeper into our past to determine the role we will play in guiding our future.


session Speakers