News Release

National Institute of General Medical Sciences
director to speak at UNC on Friday (March 24)

CHAPEL HILL – Dr. Jeremy M. Berg, director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, will speak at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Friday (March 24) as a part of the Institute for Science Learning’s lecture series.

Berg’s presentation, "Integrative Biology: New Horizons for Biomedical Research and Training," will begin at 11 a.m. in room 136 of the Tate-Turner-Kuralt Building. A reception will follow the event.

The presentation and reception are free to the public.

Berg’s talk is the second in the institute’s lecture series: "The Future of Science Education and Research." The series addresses the challenges that the United States faces in remaining a global leader in science education and research by examining academic, social, policy and economic factors that underlie the decline in the sciences and how they can be addressed.

The outcomes of the series are intended to contribute to the Chancellor’s Task Force on Engagement with North Carolina.

Berg became director of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in November 2003. He oversees a $1.9 billion budget that funds basic research in cell biology, biophysics, genetics, developmental biology, pharmacology, physiology, biological chemistry, bioinformatics and computational biology.

Berg’s research focuses on the structural and functional roles that metal ions, especially zinc, have in proteins. He is a co-author of more than 130 research papers and three textbooks.

UNC’s Institute for Science Learning builds collaborations among disciplines, programs and organizations to produce learning innovations that are creating a science learning renaissance at academic, education, organization and social levels.

The institute contains several programs, such as the Instructional Media Group, the DESTINY Traveling Science Learning Program, the SPIRE Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the Tailored Technology Research Group. The institute led a team of collaborators to win the 2005 Pirelli INTERNETional Award; its "Microarrays MediaBook" was chosen by Pirelli’s international jury as the best product of multimedia education for students.

For more information, visit www.isl.unc.edu.

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Institute for Science Learning contact: Lea Hart, (919) 843-5914 or hart@unc.edu