Eberly College of Science

Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology set for Sept. 20 and 21

Bruce Levin, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, will present the Russell E. Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology at Penn State on September 20 and 21, 2022. Credit: Emory UniversityAll Rights Reserved.

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Bruce Levin, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Biology at Emory University, will present the Russell E. Marker Lectures in Evolutionary Biology on Sept. 20 and 21 at Foster Auditorium in Paterno Library and virtually via Zoom. The free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science. 
 
The series includes a lecture intended for a general audience as well as a more specialized lecture. The first, more specialized lecture, titled “What a population and evolutionary biologist can tell clinicians and epidemiologists about antibiotic and phage therapy of bacterial infections,” will be held at 3 p.m. on Sept. 20. The second, more general lecture, titled “Cool questions and some answers about the population and evolutionary biology and ecology of virulent and temperate bacteriophage,” will be held at 3 p.m. on Sept. 21. 
 
Levin is a population and evolutionary biologist whose research group uses mathematical and computer simulation modeling and experiments with bacteria to study population biology and the ecology and evolution of bacteria and their viruses and plasmids. They also study infectious disease, antibiotic and phage therapy, and antibiotic resistance.

Levin is a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science and a native fellow or member of the American Academy of Microbiology, the American Academy of Arts and Science, and the U.S. National Academy of Science. Prior to joining the faculty at Emory in 1992, he taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, from 1971 to 1992 and at Brown University from 1967 to 1971. He received a doctoral degree in genetics in 1967 and a bachelor’s degree in zoology in 1963, both from the University of Michigan.

The Marker lectures were established in 1984 through a gift from Russell Earl Marker, professor emeritus of chemistry at Penn State, whose pioneering synthetic methods revolutionized the steroid-hormone industry and opened the door to the current era of hormone therapies, including the birth-control pill. The Marker endowment allows the Eberly College of Science to present annual Marker lectures in astronomy and astrophysics, the chemical sciences, evolutionary biology, genetic engineering, the mathematical sciences, and physics. 

To attend the lectures virtually, click the first lecture’s zoom link on Sept. 20 or the second lecture’s zoom link on Sept. 21.
 

Last Updated September 15, 2022