Please join us as we celebrate the power of research and the power of partnership at a symposium being held in conjunction with the dedication of the Iris S. and Bert L. Wolstein Research Building. The symposium is set for Friday, October 17 at 8:00 a.m. at the Research Building located at 2103 Cornell Road.

Our invited speakers promise to engage your mind as they discuss their work in relation to the theme of “Science and Education Serving Society.” The symposium promises to be a provocative and fascinating morning. I strongly believe that science must make a difference by doing good, by helping people and society. The symposium’s panel of researchers will explore this concept and share their ideas on what we can do to enhance science’s ability to serve society. The magnificent new Wolstein Research Building will not only be symbolic of the strong affiliation between Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and University Hospitals of Cleveland, but also of the ties that bind these two institutions to Cleveland, the nation, and the world as the researchers who will be working in that building will be seeking to discover new ways of treating and curing diseases, and improving health.

Joining the panelists will be Ohio Gov. Robert Taft, who will make the opening remarks. Gov. Taft and the Ohio legislature have been highly supportive of the science enterprise here and throughout the state. They know the potential that science and medical research have for helping improve the health of Ohio’s citizens, as well as their important role in state’s economy.

We will also be honored by having on the program Bert Wolstein, who with his wife Iris donated generously to this magnificent new research building. Mr. Wolstein will introduce the governor.

Our keynote speaker, Leon E. Rosenberg, M.D., currently is a lecturer in molecular biology and public and international affairs at Princeton. His career has included contributions made as an investigator with the National Cancer Institute; as a faculty member at Yale, where he helped establish the Department of Human Genetics and was its first chairman; as dean of the Yale University School of Medicine; and as president of the Pharmaceutical Research Institute and senior vice president of scientific affairs at Bristol-Myers Squibb. A specialist in inherited metabolic disorders in children, Dr. Rosenberg’s current research is aimed at a better understanding of the national enterprise that supports life sciences and medical research.

Sanford D. Markowitz, M.D., Ph.D., , the Ingalls Professor of Cancer Genetics at Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals of Cleveland, is one of the nation’s leading colon cancer researchers. He also is an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit medical research organization that funds hundreds of leading biomedical scientists working at the forefront of their fields toward advances in medical care. Dr. Markowitz and his colleagues chart the genetic events that can lead to the formation of colon cancer. In 1995, he and James K.V. Willson, M.D., discovered the gene that causes cancer on the right side of the colon.

James W. Kazura, M.D., is director of the Center for Global Health and Diseases at the Case School of Medicine and professor of medicine and international health at Case and University Hospitals of Cleveland. His research focuses on understanding the genetic and immunologic mechanisms underlying susceptibility to particular infections and diseases, with the goal of improving methods to control these diseases in human populations living in areas of the world where they represent major public health problems. Earlier this year, he was the senior author of a paper appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine and signifying an important milestone in learning how to halt a major mosquito-borne disease, lymphatic filariasis (commonly known as elephantiasis), affecting 120 million people around the world.

Sincerely,

Ralph I. Horwitz, M.D.
Dean, School of Medicine, and
Vice President for Medical Affairs,
Case Western Reserve University,
and
Director, Case Research Institute