Media Advisory – UA Alum and Leading Genetics Researcher Returns to Campus Friday to Discuss Hope for Cancer Cure

Dr. Richard Myers, a leader in the race to find cures to various cancers and other genetic-based diseases, will meet with members of the media on Friday, March 15 at 10 a.m. in the Biology Building, room 229, on The University of Alabama campus.

Myers, a Tuscaloosa native and 1977 University of Alabama graduate, is founder and director of the Human Genome Center at Stanford University. The Stanford Human Genome Center is one of the key sites in the world’s effort to chart each rung of the DNA ladder to understand the genetic basis of diseases such as Huntington Disease, autism, epilepsy, and skin, breast and ovarian cancer.

Professor and chair of the department of genetics at Stanford, Myers will also give a talk at 7 p.m. on Friday, March 15 in the UA Biology Building, room 127. He will present “Of People, Patterns and Pathology: What Are We Learning From The Human Genome Project?” as UA’s fifth annual William Darden Lecture.

The lecture is co-sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Biological Sciences Program Grant awarded to UA. Darden, professor emeritus of biological sciences and long-time chair of the department in UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, completed 31 years of service to UA. Mrs. Ilouise Hill established the lecture in his honor.