The 2019 Senior Vice Chancellor’s Laureate Lecture Series will present gene transcription pioneer Robert G. Roeder, PhD, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Professor and head of the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Rockefeller University, as its next speaker.

He will deliver his talk, “Transcriptional Regulatory Mechanisms in Animal Cells,” at 4 p.m. on Tuesday, November 19, in room 1105AB, 11th floor, Scaife Hall.

Introducing Dr. Roeder and leading a discussion following the lecture will be Arthur S. Levine, MD, Pitt’s senior vice chancellor for the health sciences and John and Gertrude Petersen Dean of Medicine.

As is the case throughout the yearlong lecture series, Dr. Roeder’s talk is free and open to the public—including all faculty, students, and staff from Pitt, Carnegie Mellon University, and the region’s other learning institutions.

Dr. Roeder has long studied the mechanisms and regulation of eukaryotic transcription and has elucidated some of the most fundamental aspects of transcription processes. He and his colleagues have extensively contributed to our understanding of the function and mechanism of action of gene-specific factors in various normal and pathological biological processes.

Over five decades, Dr. Roeder’s contributions to understanding transcription include the discovery and subsequent functional and mechanistic characterization of nuclear RNA polymerases (I, II, and III), cognate classes of RNA polymerase-specific initiation factors, the first of several thousand gene- and cell-specific transcriptional activators, and a variety of ubiquitous and tissue-specific transcriptional co-activators.

He pioneered the use of cell-free systems to recreate the essence of transcription in a test tube with cloned genes and factors purified from cellular extracts. He continues to study transcriptional activators that are important for homeostasis, lymphoid cell differentiation, lymphoid malignancy, and tumor suppression.

Among Dr. Roeder’s honors and awards are the Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award, the Passano Award, the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research, and the 2001 Dickson Prize in Medicine. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His educational background includes earning a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, a master’s in chemistry at the University of Illinois, a PhD in biochemistry at the University of Washington, and completing a postdoctoral fellowship in embryology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

Please join us for the November 19 lecture by one of today’s most renowned scientists.