Friday, June 27, 2008

Tuesday, June 24th: Distinguished Speaker Series: Erin O'Shea

Photo from the National Academy of Sciences InterViews

Professor Erin O'Shea is indescribably amazing. Just to give you an idea of how valuable she is to our research community, Harvard had to snatch her from the University of California - San Francisco. Every introduction of her I've heard so far mentions the fact that she obtained her Chemistry PhD from MIT in only two years, which is almost unimaginable.

Her talk to PRISE fellows gave us a whirlwind tour of her recent work on the circadian oscillator - the biochemical clock - in cyanobacteria. In a nutshell, based on the newly discovered Kai family of proteins, she uncovered a new paradigm by which organisms such as cyanobacteria keep time and tailor their metabolism according to environmental changes (such as light and darkness). This new paradigm challenges the long-established transcription translation oscillator (TTO) model and suggests that the internal molecular clock involves post-translational pathways. For more detailed information about her work, check out her lab page at http://golgi.harvard.edu/O'Shea/.

I do have to admit though, that I was pretty tired from the day's lab chores, and my eyelids felt helplessly heavy. However, the moment Prof. O'Shea embarked on explaining her quest of discovery, I was galvanized into alertness and could not help being fully engrossed in her talk. She is a very clear, controlled speaker, and one of her best qualities I think is her ability to convey complex science in simple, meaningful, and concise terms to the general audience. Passionate about her research, she definitely knows how to make others excited about her projects as well!

Check out pictures of the event at the PRISE 2008 photoblog by Stephanie Lo (one of our program assistants): prise2008.blogspot.com

No comments: