Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture

Michael Christman

2011 Lecturer: Michael Christman

On December 1, 2011, Michael Christman, the president and chief executive officer of Coriell Institute for Medical Research, will deliver the 2011 Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia. His lecture will be entitled "Personalized Medicine and the Human Genome: What Your Doctor Should Know About Your Genes."

Soon after arriving at the institute, Christman established the Coriell Personalized Medicine Collaborative (CPMC), a forward-looking research study at the forefront of genome-informed medicine. The study’s truly collaborative team of physicians, scientists, ethicists, genetic counselors, pharmacists, information-technology experts, and volunteer study participants recognizes the promise of personalized medicine and seeks to guide its ethical, legal, and responsible implementation.

The CPMC study has been recognized by Health and Human Services secretary Michael Leavitt’s task force as a pioneer in personalized medicine. The combination of the CPMC’s unique study design and its focus on education, ethical conduct, and scientific validity has garnered much praise: Nature described the study as “leading by example,” and MIT Technology Review placed the CPMC on its 2010 “Top 10 Research Projects to Watch” list.

Under Christman’s leadership Coriell has also established a federally funded induced pluripotent stem-cell laboratory. This remarkable technology allows a skin or blood cell to be coaxed into becoming nearly any cell type in the body, opening new avenues for research, drug discovery, and eventually therapy.

Before assuming the leadership role at Coriell in 2007, Christman chaired the Department of Genetics and Genomics at Boston University School of Medicine and led an international group that performed the first genome-wide association study using the Framingham Heart Study Cohort. Christman and other Coriell scientists recently collaborated with Charles Rotimi of the National Institutes of Health to complete one of the first genome-wide association studies of an African American cohort.

Christman has published articles in such scientific journals as Science, Nature, and Cell, and his work has been described in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and other media. He is a member of the Genetics Society of America, the New Jersey Technology Council Board of Directors, and the WHYY scientific advisory board.

Christman received a B.S. in chemistry with honors from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley; he did postdoctoral work in genetics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

About the Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture

The Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture was established in 1990 to emphasize to the general public the positive role that the chemical and molecular sciences play in our lives. Ullyot lectures are held annually and are open to the public. Ullyot lecturers are distinguished in their fields, nationally recognized, and able to communicate to a nonscientific audience.

The Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture is jointly sponsored by the Chemical Heritage Foundation, the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of the Sciences, and the Philadelphia Section and Delaware Section of the American Chemical Society.

About Glenn Edgar Ullyot

Glenn Edgar Ullyot earned a B.S. in chemistry from the University of Minnesota and an M.S. and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Illinois. During a successful 38-year career with SmithKline & French Laboratories (now GlaxoSmithKline), Ullyot progressed through several stages of responsibility, from bench chemist to director of scientific liaison.

Ullyot’s primary scientific interests were with medicinal chemistry, therapeutic agents, and their biological activity. He published many papers, received patents on numerous compounds, and played a significant role in the development of several products, including Benzidrex, a nonstimulating analog of the inhaler Benzidrine, and Diazide, a diuretic agent for the treatment of high blood pressure.

Ullyot was an active member of and leader in the American Chemical Society for more than 60 years and served on several important U.S. governmental committees. Owing to his deep commitment to education, he established the Ullyot Public Affairs Lecture, stating, “Chemistry, biology, and physics are the basic sciences that are keys to understanding the world around us. It is my hope that each Ullyot lecturer will increasingly stimulate more people to appreciate the positive impact these sciences and the people who pursue them have on our daily lives.”

Ullyot lecturers are distinguished in their fields, nationally recognized, and able to communicate to a wide audience.