Rita Colwell to deliver Regents’ lectures

Rita Colwell, a widely respected environmental microbiologist and educator and a former director of the National Science Foundation, is set to deliver a pair of Regents’ lectures during the coming week.

Colwell, who holds the title of Distinguished University Professor both at the University of Maryland at College Park and at Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Health, is a senior adviser and chairman emeritus of Canon U.S. Life Sciences. The co-author of 17 books and more than 750 scientific publications, her interests range from infectious disease and microbial genomics to ecology and evolutionary biology. She is currently developing an international network to address emerging infectious diseases and water issues, including safe drinking water for both the developed and developing world.

The topic of her first lecture, at Barker Hall at noon Wednesday, March 16, will be “Genomic sequencing as a useful tool for identification of pathogens.” Her second lecture, “Global infectious diseases — climate, oceans and cholera,” is scheduled for Thursday, March 17, at 4 p.m. in Room 100 of the Genetics and Plant Biology Building.

This year’s Regents’ lectures are being sponsored jointly by the departments of Plant and Microbial Biology, Integrative Biology and Molecular and Cell Biology. The program presents scholars whose careers in arts, letters, science or business have been at least in part outside academia, and has been an annual feature of Berkeley campus life for over 50 years.

Calendar entries for Colwell’s lectures can be found on the Berkeley Events website.