The Robert W. and A-Young M. Woody Lecture Series

The Robert W. and A-Young M. Woody Lecture Series was established by Dr. Robert and Dr. A-Young Woody to provide an endowed lectureship series for the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. The lectureship series enables the department to invite distinguished scientists to campus to deliver lectures and to meet with faculty, students and postdoctoral research associates.

We were thrilled to have Dr. Michael Rosen deliver the most recent Woody Lecture entitled “Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation of Biological Systems” on April 15, 2024.  Dr. Michael Rosen is a Professor and Chair of Biophysics at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

Previous speakers of the Woody Lecture series:

• Dr. Jennifer Lippincott-Schwartz, 4D Cellular Physiology at Janelia Research Campus and HHMI, presented “Looking under the hood of cells: from single molecule dynamics to whole cell organelle reconstructions” on March 20th, 2023
• Dr. Rachel Green, professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics, John Hopkins University School of Medicine and HHMI, presented “Ribosome collisions trigger cell fate signaling pathways” on October 26, 2021.
• Dr. Kim Orth, Professor of Molecular Biology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and HHMI,  presented “Black Spot, Black Death, Black Pearl:  The tales of Bacterial Effectors” on October 15, 2019.
• Dr. Wesley Sundquist, Samuels Professor of Biochemistry, University of Utah School of Medicine, presented “Membrane Remodeling by the ESCRT Pathway” on June 11, 2018.
• Dr. Thomas Pollard, Sterling Professor of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, Yale University, presented “Quantitative analysis of the mechanisms of cellular motility, endocytosis and cytokinesis,” on March 14, 2014.

Dr. Carlos Bustamante (UC-Berkeley and HHMI) presented the inaugural lecture in the Robert W. and A-Young M. Woody Lectureship Series entitled, “Grabbing the cat by the tail: Discrete steps by a DNA packaging motor and the inter-subunit coordination in a ring-ATPase,” on Thursday, March 3, 2011.

Robert Woody received a B.S. in Chemistry from Iowa State College in 1958 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962.  A-Young M. Woody received a B.S. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Cornell University in 1964.  Robert and A-Young were faculty members in the Department of Biochemistry at Colorado State University from 1975 until their retirements in 2008 and 2004, respectively.