Bioscience Symposium Schedule

Thursday, January 21, 2016, Cole Assembly Room, Converse Hall

3 p.m. Introductory remarks by George Carmany '62. Carmany is an investor in health care in Boston, the former chairman of the Tufts Medical Center and a member of the Advisory Committee on Education at the Harvard Medical School. Carmany and Gerald Fink '62 are the co-founders of the Fink Symposium.

3:10 p.m. Talk by Gerald Fink '62. Fink is a professor of genetics at MIT, a founding member of the Whitehead Institute and its former director.

3:50 p.m. Cuthbert Simpkins '69 will present "A Hospital Based Violence Intervention Program that Works." His talk details the violence intervention program implemented by Simpkins as an attending trauma surgeon at the University of Maryland and RA Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore in the mid 1990s. It will also debunk much of the mythology that exists around violence and provide a new working framework in which to study violence, develop new programs and justify expansion of programs that have been shown to be effective.

4:30 p.m. Pamela Flood '85 will discuss the process by which she came to live her dream. "It began sometime in high school with a certainty. Enormous uncertainty and the development of focus was discovered at Amherst. The rest has been guided along the way by a cast of amazing and inspirational characters." Her talk is titled "Shoots and Ladders: The Ups and Downs of a Career in Translational Medicine."

5:10 p.m. Talk by Minjee Kim '17. "A Student's Reflections on Biomedical Research at Amherst and Highlights from an Exceptional Summer Experience at Whitehead: A Legacy of the Gerald Fink Symposium." Minjee will talk about her experiences in healthcare and research. Her talk will focus on her experiences at, and prior to, Amherst, and on her experience the previous summer at the Whitehead Institute.

5:50 p.m. Talk by Dr. Barbara McNeil. Dr. McNeil is the founder of the Health Care Policy Department of the Harvard Medical School and served as the chairman of the NAS Board Committee on Health Care Services. 

6:30 p.m. All depart for the Lewis Sebring Dining Commons.

6:45 p.m. Reception and Dinner - Lewis-Sebring Commons at Valentine Hall.

8 p.m. (approx.) Keynote Speaker Harold Varmus '61. Dr. Varmus will discuss new developments in cancer research and how they intersect with social, economic and political issues.

9 p.m. Event concludes