Press Release

October 4, 2006
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Contact: Jerry Carey
Phone: (856) 566-6171
careyge@umdnj.edu

35th Annual George Boxer Memorial Lecture Slated for Oct. 10

PISCATAWAY — Dr. Pasko Rakic, a world renowned researcher in the field of cellular and molecular development of the brain and the director of the Kavli Institute for Neuroscience at Yale University School of Medicine, will present "Making Maps of the Mind," the 2006 George Boxer Memorial Lecture, on October 10, at 4 p.m., in the Main Auditorium at UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, 675 Hoes Lane, in Piscataway. The Boxer Memorial Lecture series is a free public program offered by the Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology.

Dr. Rakic, the Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and chairman of Neurobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, is the author of hundreds of scientific papers that outline his discoveries on the development of the cerebral cortex. Among his pioneering contributions is the discovery of the way that embryonic nerve cells migrate in the central nervous system. His studies have provided the framework for much of the current understanding of normal and pathological development of the human brain as well as congenital disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease and childhood epilepsy.

This year's lecture is the 35th in a prestigious series that began in 1969 as a tribute in memory of Dr. George E. Boxer, former executive director of the Merck Institute and associate editor of Cancer Research. Over the years, this acclaimed series has attracted lecturers from across the nation, including eight Nobel Prize winners.

More information about the George Boxer Memorial Lecture is available by contacting the Department of Neuroscience and Cell Biology at the UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at (732) 235-5391.

UMDNJ is the nation's largest free-standing public health sciences university with more than 5,500 students attending the state's three medical schools, its only dental school, a graduate school of biomedical sciences, a school of health related professions, a school of nursing and its only school of public health, on five campuses. Last year, there were more than two million patient visits to UMDNJ facilities and faculty at campuses in Newark, New Brunswick/Piscataway, Scotch Plains, Camden and Stratford. UMDNJ operates University Hospital, a Level I Trauma Center in Newark, and University Behavioral HealthCare, a mental health and addiction services network.