Monday
John Pezzuto – Western New England University
Potential Health Benefits of Long-Term Grape Consumption
Dr. Pezzuto previously served as Dean and Professor of Pharmacy of the Arnold and Marie Schwartz College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences at Long Island University, as Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and held deanships at the College of Pharmacy, Nursing, and Health Sciences at Purdue University; and the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, where he was the founding dean.
Pezzuto was the 2014 recipient of the Volwiler Research Award, the top research award from the American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and is an author of over 600 publications, including the first report describing the cancer preventive activity of resveratrol, a component of grapes and grape products such as red wine.
Tuesday
Kent Kauffman – Purdue University Fort Wayne
Syllabus as Course Contract
Kent Kauffman is associate professor of Business Law and Ethics, and is the MBA Programs Faculty Liaison in the Doermer School of Business at Purdue University Fort Wayne, where he teaches in the undergraduate and MBA Programs. He is the author of four books, including the recently released Navigating Choppy Waters: Key Legal Issues Faculty Need to Know, published by Rowman & Littlefield.
Wednesday
Noor Youssef – Harvard Medical School
Outpacing the Virus: How AI Can Future-Proof Vaccines
Dr. Noor Youssef is a mathematician turned biologist driven by a passion for using mathematics and computer science to tackle pressing challenges in human health. She received her PhD in computational biology from Dalhousie University, where she focused on mechanistic models of evolution, and is currently a Scientific Lead in the Marks Lab at Harvard Medical School. Her work centers on viral evolution and the development of AI-driven tools to guide vaccine and therapeutic design, with a broader goal of building predictive frameworks that can inform real-world health decisions.
Thursday
Karine Rizzoti – Francis Crick Institute
Origins of Pituitary Glands Regulating Puberty and Reproduction
Karine Rizzoti completed her Ph.D. at the University Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, where she studied cell movements during early embryonic development. She then moved to London to join the laboratory of Robin Lovell-Badge, initially at the National Institute for Medical Research, which later became part of the Francis Crick Institute. Her research gradually focused on the development and function of the neuroendocrine hypothalamo-pituitary axis. She contributed to the discovery of pituitary stem cells and investigated aspects of their biology, examining mechanisms underlying cell fate acquisition in both embryonic and postnatal contexts.
Friday
Lindsay Miles – Virginia Tech University
Bed Bugs
I look through the lens of population genetics and molecular evolution to understand how urbanization impacts organisms. I am co-founder of the urban evolution blog that summarizes urban evolutionary research for the public. I am also part of the Urban Eco-Evo Network, a group of collaborative scientists that are integrating our fields of research to understand the eco-evolutionary dynamics of urbanization. I am currently studying how urbanization and pesticide use can influence genomic evolution in bed bugs.
