Distinguished Lecture Series

Once a week, COSMOS invites distinguished scientists from different STEM fields to speak to all students as a part of our All-COSMOS Distinguished Lecture Series. The lectures showcase how different fields of math and science are interrelated and collaborate to develop new research and solve problems. Students attend the lecture series as a part of their course on communicating science. Past lecturers have included world-renown physicists, astronomers, engineers, climate scientists, mathematicians, oceanographers, and biologists.

2024 speakers will be announced soon!  Have a look at some of our past Distinguished Lecture Speakers below.

 

Dr. Manoj Kaplinghat, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, has research interests that span the fields of astrophysics, cosmology, and particle physics. His main research goal is to understand the nature of energy that is driving the expansion of the Universe. Only 5% of this energy is due to particles that make up the periodic table and therefore much of his work focuses on the things that can’t be seen: dark matter and dark energy. Among his numerous awards and accolades, the importance of his research is reflected in the number of citations his works have received: nearly 20,000! Professor Kaplinghat is also a proud first generation college graduate and plays a large role in mentoring and developing coursework for first generation undergraduate students at UCI.

 

Dr. Robert Spitale is the Associate Director and Associate Dean of Research in the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on developing novel chemical and bioinformatic approaches toward understanding the role of Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) structure and function in disease phenotypes. Professor Spitale is interested in the development of chemical methods that aim to understand how RNA molecules interact with proteins and where they are localized within living cells, as well as seeking the causal relationship between RNA function and disease. He aims to provide novel insight that could be utilized in the design of novel therapeutic strategies for controlling and/or preventing deleterious RNA functions.

 

Dr. Leslie Thompson completed her PhD in 1989 at UCI and became a faculty member in 2000. Dr. Thompson has studied Huntington’s disease (HD) for most of her scientific career and was a member of the international consortium that identified the causative gene for HD in 1993 while a postdoctoral fellow at UCI. She also co-identified the mutation causing achondroplasia, the most common genetic form of short-limbed dwarfism in 1994. Dr. Thompson was one of the founders of the HD patient clinic at UCI, is a member of the Huntington Study Group Scientific Affairs Committee and Enroll-HD Clinical Trial Committee, which are each involved in HD clinical trials, is part of the UCI HDSA Center of Excellence, and is very active in the HD community. Dr. Thompson is a member of the Hereditary Disease Foundation HD Cure Committee, HD CARE Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), Huntington’s Disease Society of America SAB Chair and member board of trustees and is founding Co-Editor in Chief of the Journal of Huntington’s Disease. She also is a member of Scientific Advisory Panels for neural stem cell therapy programs in Italy and Spain and on the SAB for Target ALS and the ALS Packard Center at Johns Hopkins University.