Arthur S. Levine currently serves as Senior Vice Chancellor for the Health Sciences and the John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Before coming to Pitt, Dr. Levine spent more than three decades at the National Institutes of Health, including sixteen years as the scientific director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. He will discuss the defining characteristics of the scientific method, the role that science has played in human progress including the enhancement of human health, and the critical impact of the federal government in advancing the health sciences through work done in such agencies as the NIH, CDC and FDA. He also will talk about the nature of  the COVID-19 disease and efforts to develop a vaccine.