Louis Levine-Gabriella de Beer Lecture in Genetics

The Louis Levine-Gabriella de Beer Lecture in Genetics was established by Gabriella de Beer in memory of her husband, Professor Louis Levine. A graduate of the College, he earned his Ph.D. in population genetics under the late great evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky at Columbia University.

Professor Levine’s research centered on population studies of Drosophila and behavior genetics of mice. Human genetics and forensic genetics were among other areas towhich he was devoted.

Professor Levine taught in the Department of Biology and in the Sophie Davis School of Biomedical Education, participated in bi-national research studies in Mexico, was Visiting Professor at the Technion (the Israel Institute of Technology) in Israel, and in later years served as a consultant and expert witness in criminal cases involving DNA evidence.

The aim of these annual lectures is to perpetuate Professor Louis Levine’s lifelong interest in the ever-expanding field of genetics.

About The Speaker: Dr. Eric N. Olson

Dr. Eric N. Olson is the founding Chair of the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. He holds the Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair, the Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research, and the Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects. Dr. Olson also serves Director of the Hamon Center for Regenerative Science & Medicine and the Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Clinical Research Center.

Dr. Olson and his trainees discovered the key transcription factors and mechanisms that control development and disease of cardiac and skeletal muscles. These discoveries, at the interface of basic science and medicine, have profoundly influenced our understanding of the development and dysfunction of the cardiovascular and muscular systems and have provided new targets for therapeutic developments. More recently, Dr. Olson turned his attention to Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), a lethal degenerative disease of skeletal muscles and the heart, that has defied all therapies. His team conceived a gene editing method to correct a majority of DMD mutations and demonstrated the effectiveness of this method in human muscle cells and in mice and dogs with DMD.

Dr. Olson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He serves on the advisory boards of numerous organizations and has founded multiple biotechnology companies to translate the discoveries from the laboratory to the clinic.