Zofia Zukowska Distinguished Lectureship
The graduate students in the Department of Integrative Biology and Physiology wanted to honor Zofia Zukowska's science, her passion for learning and her energetic, positive approach to life. In the fall of 2014, the students organized the inaugural Zofia Zukowska Distinguished Lectureship.
Zofia obtained both her M.D. and Ph.D. from the Medical Academy in Warsaw, Poland, and came to the US in 1980 to train as a Fellow and Associate with Dr. Irv Kopin in the Laboratory of Clinical Science, NIHM. In 1985 she took a faculty position in the Department of Physiology & Biophysics at Georgetown University, where she was promoted to full professor in 1995, and went on to become department chair in 2006. Zofia founded the IBP Stress Physiology Center at the U of MN in 2010 where she served as its director until 2012. Zofia’s work centered on neuropeptide Y function in obesity and cardiovascular disease and her studies were well known and highly regarded in context of the unique insights made in stress physiology. Her work was published in the most rigorous peer-reviewed journals and her dynamic laboratory was funded by numerous NIH and foundation grants, including the prestigious NIH MERIT award. Zofia received many notable awards for her work including the Copernicus Award for Excellence in Neuropeptide Research. Zofia’s passion and drive for excellence is the inspiration for this lecture series.
Past Lectureships
2024 Keynote Speaker
Dr. Daria Ilatovskaya is a leader in renal regulation of salt sensitivity hypertension and sex differences in mitochondrial function. Daria is an Associate Professor at Augusta University and the Graduate Program Director for Physiology.
2023 Keynote Speaker
Jennifer Davis, Ph.D., is a leader in skeletal and cardiac muscle physiology and fibroblast biology. Dr. Davis is currently the Eva and Arra Woods endowed Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Biology in the Departments of Lab Medicine and Pathology and Bioengineering at the University of Washington.
2022 Keynote Speaker
Stephanie Correa, Ph.D., is a world-recognized figure in the field of women's health. Dr. Correa is Associate Professor in the department of Integrative Biology and Physiology at UCLA. She has interests in metabolism, neurobiology sexual dimorphisms, and reproductive heath.
2019 Keynote Speaker
Dr. Richard T. Lee, M.D., who has been a leading figure in the cardiac regeneration field over the last decade. Dr. Lee is Professor of Stem cell and Regenerative biology at Harvard University and Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Lee is well known for his contributions to the heart
regeneration field, but his areas of expertise also include diabetes, aging and metabolism.
2018 Keynote Speaker
Dr. Anne Carpenter, Ph.D., a pioneer in the field of image-based profiling and leader of the CellProfiler software project. Dr. Carpenter is an Institute Scientist directing the Imaging Platform at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT. Her research group develops algorithms and data analysis methods for large-scale experiments involving images.
2017 Keynote Speaker
Viviana Gradinaru, Ph.D., a preeminent leader in the field of neuroscience. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology and Biological Engineering. Additionally, she serves as the Director of Caltech's Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience and the CLOVER Center (Beckman Institute for CLARITY, Optogenetics, and Vector Engineering).
2016 Keynote Speaker
Kathryn Sandberg, Ph.D. is a preeminent leader in the field of hypertension. Dr. Sandberg is a Professor and Vice Chair for Research in the Departments of Medicine and Physiology at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. Additionally, she serves as Director of the Center for the Study of Sex Differences in Health, Aging and Disease as well as the Translational Biomedical Science Program at Georgetown-Howard Universities.
2015 Keynote Speaker
Anthony R. Hunter, Ph.D. Tony is one of the foremost leaders in the field of cell growth control, is the Renato Dulbecco Chair in Cancer Research, the Director of the National Cancer Institute-designated Salk Institute Cancer Center, and an American Cancer Society Professor in the Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California.
2014 Keynote Speaker
Dr. Ronald G. Victor, M.D., is Director of the Cedars-Sinai Center for Hypertension, Associate Director of Clinical Research and holds the Burns and Allen Chair in Cardiology Research at the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute. He is board certified in internal medicine with a subspecialty in cardiovascular diseases.