Dr. Gökhan S. Hotamisligil to present 2024 Davidson Lecture

The Department of Physiology is pleased to announce Professor Gökhan S. Hotamisligil as this year’s recipient of the 11th John K. and Mary E. Davidson Lectureship and Award. Thanks to a generous endowment from the Davidson family, the Department is able to Award two distinct biennial lectureships: 1) the John K and Mary E Davidson Lectureship; and 2) the Charles H. Best Lectureship.  The department hosts these lectures on alternate years.   

Dr. John “Jack” Davidson III was born in 1922. He was trained as an endocrinologist with a medical degree from Emory University and married Mary Coney.  Together they would have four children. In 1959, the Davidsons moved to Toronto so that Jack could study with Charles H. Best at the University of Toronto where he graduated with a PhD in Physiology in 1965. Dr. Davidson earned an academic appointment at U of T in both Medicine and Physiology but, after eight years in Canada, he returned to an appointment at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and established the Diabetes Unit at Grady Hospital. Dr. Davidson passed away in December 2008 and was soon followed by Mary in 2010. The Davidson and Best families were/have remained very close.   

This year’s Davidson Lecturer, Gökhan S. Hotamisligil, is the James Stevens Simmons Chair of Genetics and Metabolism at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH); Director of the Sabri Ülker Center for Metabolic Research, and an associate member of Harvard-MIT Broad Institute, Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the Joslin Diabetes Center. Professor Hotamisligil has been a pioneer in research efforts to explain the mechanistic basis of common chronic metabolic diseases; particularly obesity, diabetes, fatty liver disease, and atherosclerosis. His work has led to the emergence of novel concepts that have altered the understanding of metabolic disease pathogenesis. 

The major interest of his laboratory is to study the regulatory pathways, which control energy metabolism. Their biochemical and genetic studies focus on signal transduction using cultured mammalian cells as well as transgenic animals to identify specific abnormalities in these pathways, which are involved in human metabolic diseases. Their work primarily embraces three major areas of research: 1) Inflammation, Stress and Metabolic Diseases; 2) Lipid Chaperones, Trafficking, Signaling and Metabolic Regulation; and 3) Differentiation and Lineage Commitment of Adipocytes and Energy Metabolism. 

Please join the Department of Physiology and Professor Hotamisligil for the 11th biennial Davidson Lecture and Reception. Details are below: 

Title: Regulated Subcellular Architecture and Metabolic Homeostasis 

Date: Thursday, March 7, 2024 

Time: 4:00-5:00pm 

Location: Medical Sciences Building (MSB), Room 2170 

Reception: MSB Room 2171 - C. David Naylor Student Commons; 5-6:30pm