Nobel Laureate to give 2017 Smerdon/Reeves Lecture

About the event

The 2017 Smerdon/Reeves Lecture will be given by Dr. Aziz Sancar, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on DNA repair, to be held April 13 in the Lewis Alumni Centre. Dr. Sancar is a professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of North Carolina, who won the Nobel Prize for mapping the mechanism of nucleotide excision repair, which repairs the nearly constant damage caused by ultraviolet radiation and other environmental factors. He shared the award with Tomas Lindahl of the Francis Crick Institute and Clare Hall Laboratory in Great Britain, and Paul Modrich of Duke University School of Medicine and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Sancar will appear via a video link at noon. Other WSU scientists from Pullman, Spokane and Tri-Cities will speak in morning and afternoon sessions starting at 10 a.m.

The lecture takes place every other year to honor the legacies of Michael J. Smerdon, Regents professor of biochemistry and biophysics, and Raymond Reeves, professor of molecular biosciences, for their pioneering work in the area of basic cancer research. It is sponsored by the WSU College of Veterinary Medicine, the School of Molecular Biosciences and the Office of Research at WSU.