Dr. Gary Nabel
Dr. Gary Nabel, director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health and senior investigator of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Bethesda, Md.), will be the guest of Weill Cornell's Department of Medicine as the Arthur Ashe Visiting Professor on Dec. 12.
Dr. Nabel, a well-known molecular virologist and immunologist who specializes in the fields of HIV, cancer and Ebola virus research, is credited with being one of the first researchers to develop a DNA-based therapeutic vaccine against cancer.
Dr. Nabel received both his M.D. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. In 1987, he became an assistant professor of internal medicine and assistant professor of biological chemistry at the University of Michigan. In addition to his faculty positions, Dr. Nabel served as director of the Center for Gene Therapy and co-director of the Center for Molecular Medicine at the University of Michigan. He has also served on several NIH advisory committees, including the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases AIDS Research Advisory Committee, which he chaired from 1996 to 1997.
Dr. Nabel was elected a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1998, in recognition of his expertise at the forefront of virology, immunology, gene therapy, and molecular biology. His honors include the James Tolbert Shipley Prize for Research for Harvard Medical School in 1982; the Midwest American Federation for Clinical Research Young Investigator Award in 1992; and the ASBMB-Amgen Scientific Achievement Award in 1996.
Dr. Nabel will present the Ashe Visiting Professor Lecture on Thursday, Dec. 12, at 11 a.m. in Uris Auditorium. His topic will be "Viral Infections and Human Pandemics." A general staff meeting will follow his presentation.
The Arthur Ashe Endowment for the Defeat of AIDS, which was established at Cornell University Medical College in 1995 with a $1 million gift from the former Arthur Ashe Foundation, sponsored the first annual Arthur Ashe Endowment Lecture in 1997. Arthur Ashe, who died in 1993, had a close relationship with physicians at NewYork-Cornell.