2022 Schedule

The blood clots that nearly killed tennis star Serena Williams shortly after she gave birth were a grim reminder that neither resources nor fame offer full protection from the risk of giving birth while Black. “No one was really listening,” wrote Williams, describing her frantic effort to get medical attention. Maternal and infant mortality rates are far higher in the US than in any other wealthy...

New insights into human biology and the ability to manipulate molecules both large and small are rapidly accelerating medical innovations. By employing genetic engineering to empower immune cells, scientist-physicians are bringing new treatment options to people with cancer. Mapping the neural circuitry involved in mood disorders points the way towards deep brain stimulation as a successful therap...

The future is upon us. Synthetic biology harnesses the power of nature to redesign organisms, allowing us to heal without prescription medicine, manipulate viruses to correct genetic defects, grow new body parts, produce meat without animals, and confront the looming climate catastrophe. But a field that brings together the principles of engineering and computer coding, the capacity to synthesize...

Knowledge about the human microbiome, those trillions of bacteria, viruses, and other microbes that inhabit our bodies, is revolutionizing medicine just as mapping the human genome continues to do. Indeed, what we are learning could take us even further because the microbiome can be altered by diet, exercise, and stress control. Computational biology, DNA sequencing, and other analytical technique...

Living until age 100 may soon be routine, but for most people that will not be enough—we also want to remain vigorous and engaged in both body and mind. To thrive, we need to start thinking early about the “map of life” that can guide us through the many stages of a century-long journey. Finding our way means making the right personal choices but also requires a shift in societal institutions and...

In 2021—five decades after President Richard Nixon declared a War on Cancer—some 1.9 million new cancer cases were diagnosed and the scourge killed more than 600,000 Americans. Yet we have made extraordinary progress on the battlefront in the same time frame. Childhood leukemia can often be cured, death rates for colorectal, cervical, and prostate cancer have fallen by half, and treatment advances...

Reproductive health, critical though it is, is not the sum of women’s health. The distinctive development of female bodies across the lifespan requires targeted study to uncover the pathways of acute and chronic conditions and the treatments that will control or cure them. Women generally live longer than men, but are at greater risk of osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s disease, and stroke, and their hear...

The recent leaps of science—sequencing the human genome, advancing the world-changing technology of CRISPR, deepening knowledge of the brain—owe much to Francis Collins’s brilliant mind and steady hand. Who better, then, to talk about what transformative discoveries come next? Genomics, immunotherapy, precision medicine, new uses for mRNA technology, and other interdisciplinary, silo-busting effor...

In its landmark 2002 study, Unequal Treatment, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) stated bluntly that racial and ethnic minorities receive lower-quality health services than white Americans. Two decades after the IOM called out structural racism, the devastating toll remains apparent in the uneven risks associated with COVID, diabetes, asthma, cancer, stroke, and pregnancy. Pain medicines are still p...

Amazing discoveries are happening in the garages and high school science classes of young pioneers. A 17-year-old invented color-changing stitches, dyed with beet juice, to provide early warning signs of infection. A Time Magazine “Kid of the Year” is building a device to detect contaminants in the water supply and using AI to call out cyberbullying. Another teenager developed a global COVID-19 ca...

Virtual Presentation: Imagine a doctor being able to watch, in real time, as white blood cells attack cancer cells in a patient, or seeing exactly how the leukocytes replicate as they fight off the cancer. It would fundamentally change how they understand and treat disease. Today, the technologies that would enable this kind of understanding do not exist—nor do the academic systems that would ince...