THE JOHN R. LAMONTAGNE LECTURE SERIES

2022 LaMontagne Lecture - March 22, 2022

The 2022 keynote speaker will be Jason McLellan, Ph.D., Welch Chair in Chemistry and Professor of Molecular Biosciences, The University of Texas at Austin. Dr. McLellan has worked to understand how viral protein structures operate. Viral protein structure and function are important for the development of vaccines and potential treatments for deadly viruses that have impacted the lives of billions of people. Dr. McLellan and his collaborators have engineered a key protein of coronaviruses for use in vaccines. His team has developed technology found in many leading vaccines against COVID-19 (Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson, and Novavax). This discovery led to his selection as Texas Inventor of the Year by the State Bar of Texas’s Intellectual Property Section, which annually recognizes individuals and their inventions that have “significantly impacted the Texas economy.” McLellan and his colleagues also designed key proteins that form the basis of several vaccines.  These vaccines are directed against coronaviruses as well as respiratory syncytial virus, a virus especially dangerous for young children and seniors. He is the winner of multiple scientific awards, and his research and expertise have been featured in multiple media outlets.

2021 LaMontagne Lecture - March 23, 2021

Our 2021 keynote speaker was Dr. Mary Estes, Distinguished Professor of Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. Her research group studies viruses that infect distinct types of cells (enterocytes, crypt cells, M cells) in the GI tract as probes to learn about the biology, host response and gene expression of these cells, using multidisciplinary approaches to probe the structure and molecular biology of GI viruses to understand the basic mechanisms that control virus replication, morphogenesis, virus-host interactions, and pathogenesis.