Spring 2023 SCS Rochester Lecture

Gene Therapy: Scientific Principles and Ethical Considerations

David Dean, Ph.D. &
Jessica Shand, M.D.

Thursday, April 20, 2023, 7:15 pm.
University of Rochester River Campus
Dewey Hall
Room 1101 (the main auditorium)

Scroll down for a map.

Zoom link available. Please contact: scsrochester@gmail.com

Dr. Dean is a scientist whose primary area of research is gene therapy. His lab has two main areas of interest: discovering how DNA traffics within the cell, moving through the cytoplasm and i nto the nucleus in order to improve the gene delivery process; and developing gene therapy-based treatments for lung diseases including acute respiratory distress syndrome and cystic fibrosis. He is currently Professor of Pediatrics, Biomedical Engineering, and Pharmacology & Physiology at the University of Rochester. Prior to being recruited to Rochester in 2007 he had been a tenured faculty member at both the Feinberg School of Medicine of Northwestern University and the College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama. Dr. Dean received his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of California at Berkeley and did postdoctoral studies at the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. Dean's laboratory page.

Dr. Shand is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Health Humanities and Bioethics. She cares for patients in the pediatric primary care practice and provides expert consultation as requested for patients with hematologic issues. She is involved in quality improvement efforts through the GCH Morbidity and Mortality Conference which she co-directs, and through development of anticoagulation best practices. She is an active scholar, focusing her recent work on the ethics of scarce resource utilization, and on improving health equity for patients with sickle cell disease. Dr. Shand serves as the Associate Director of the Resident Research Track and teaches in the DEI and Core Bioethics curricula. Dr. Shand holds a joint appointment in the Department of Health Humanities and Bioethics, where she serves at the Bioethics Pathway Director, teaches several courses in Bioethics, mentors students, and implements curriculum innovations at the intersection of ethics, health equity, and spiritual care. Dr. Shand also holds an institutional leadership role as the Director of the URMC Clinician and Faculty Wellbeing Program, bringing an interdisciplinary lens to improving clinician wellbeing through innovations in technology use and team debriefs. Dr. Shand received her M.D. from the University of Buffalo. Her post-graduate training included Pediatric Residency at the University of Rochester and a fellowship in Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Johns Hopkins University.

Spring 2022 Guest Lecturer

Jonathan Lunine, Ph.D.
Faith and the Expanding Universe of George Lemaitre
Thursday, April 7, 2022, 7:15 pm.
University of Rochester River Campus

Watch the lecture on YouTube here. This is better for a mobile device.

Or you can view it directly below.

He is the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences and Chair of the Department of Astronomy at Cornell University. (Ph.D. Planetary Science 1985, Caltech) Prof. Lunine does research in astrophysics, planetary science and astrobiology. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and among other awards is the recipient of the Jean Dominique Cassini Medal of the European Geosciences Union (2015) and the Basic Sciences Award of the Int. Academy of Astronautics (2009). He is the author of Astrobiology, A Multidisciplinary Approach (Pearson Addison-Wesley, 2005) and Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World (2nd ed., Cambridge Univ. Press, 2013).

Dr. Lunine's faculty page at Cornell.

Dr. Lunine's visit was cosponsored by the Agathon Institute of Western New York.

We are grateful to the John Templeton Foundation for their financial support of Dr. Lunine's visit.

Spring 2023 Newman Center Dinner & Discussion after the 7 pm Mass on Sunday, March 19, 2023

Evolution and the Catholic Faith

Discussion of little appreciated facts about the long-standing harmony of Catholic thought and the science of evolution. Hear from St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. John-Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. About 10 minutes of excerpts will be taken from the video of Dr. Stephen Barr, Ph.D., Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware delivered in 2017 (https://catholicscientists.org/videos/page/5/) to stimulate our discussion of:

• Can a scientist be a Catholic?
• Are modern biology and religious faith opposed to one another?
• Does acceptance of modern evolutionary biology mean a human is only a randomly generated meat robot?

Watch the lecture on YouTube here. This is better for a mobile device.

Or you can view it directly below.