Faculty Lectures
Dr. Du recently gave a lecture titled "Genetic and Biochemical Basis for Two Groups of Natural Inhibitors of Ceramide Synthases" at the 2nd SINO-US Round-table Conference on Chemical Biology and New Drug Discovery held in Changsha, China, September 15-19, 2008. The conference was in conjunction with an event organized by the Hunan provincial government inviting selected oversea scholars to visit Hunan, a province located in central China. Changsha is the capital city of the province and has a population of over 5 million.
There were eight US speakers, mainly from medical schools such as Cornell Medical, Johns Hopkins, Indiana Medical, UW-Madison school of Pharmacy, and NCI. About the same number of colleagues from China participated from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and several top universities.
The conference was unique due to the number of high-ranking governmental officials who attended the events, including officials from the Department of Sciences and Technology in Beijing, the governor and other officials from Hunan Province and Changsha. A large media contingency, representing TV stations and newspapers, covered conference events arranged by the local government. This included scientific presentations and social events involving representatives from hi-tech parks, biomedical facilities, and administrators of several universities in Changsha.
