Four to Share Expertise at Ashland Lecture Series

LEXINGTON, Ky. (Oct. 21, 2009) − Four speakers from wide-ranging backgrounds will participate in the day-long Ashland Inc. Distinguished Lecture Series Friday, Nov. 6, in the University of Kentucky's William T. Young Library Auditorium.

At 8:30 a.m., Jay Keasling of the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California at Berkeley will speak on "Synthetic Biology in Pursuit of Low-cost, Effective, Anti-malarial Drugs."

Keasling, UC-Berkeley's Hubbard Howe Distinguished Professor, performs research focusing on the metabolic engineering of microorganisms for degrading environmental contaminants and for environmentally friendly synthesis. He is a Fellow of both the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2000) and the American Academy of Microbiology (2007).

James C. Liao, the Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles, will speak at 10 a.m. on "Engineering Metabolism for Energy Problems."

Liao's research focuses on using metabolic engineering and systems biology principles for a range of scientific and engineering applications. He was elected a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2002 and received the Merck Award for Metabolic Engineering in 2006 and the Marvin J. Johnson Award of the American Chemical Society in 2009.

At 11 a.m., Ilya Shmulevich, professor in the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Wash., will speak on "Transcriptional Regulatory Networks from the Bottom Down."

Shmulevich, whose research involves the computational, mathematical and statistical aspects of systems biology, complex systems theory and other topics, has held positions at Tampere University of Technology in Finland, the University of Texas Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University.

The series continues at 1:30 p.m. with Gregory N. Stephanopoulos, W.H. Dow Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, speaking on "Biofuels and Metabolic Engineering."

Stephanopoulos, who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003, has published more than 300 scientific and academic papers. His research focuses on metabolic engineering and the engineering of microbes for the production of fuels and chemicals.

The series' final lecture will be presented at 2:45 p.m. by Keasling, who will speak on "Engineering Microbial Metabolism for Production of Advanced Biofuels.

Each lecture will be followed by a brief question-and-answer session.

The Ashland Inc. Distinguished Lecture Series is presented by the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering in the UK College of Engineering. For more information, please see http://www.engr.uky.edu/cme/index.html.