Thomas Cole Lectures To Be Given By Wabash Graduate Alex Burgin

CRAWFORDSVILLE, IND. — The Thomas Cole Lectures in Biology will be given this year by Alex Burgin, director of biochemistry at Emerald BioStructures. The lectures will be held on Monday, March 24 and Tuesday, March 25. Burgin will give a technical talk entitled “Structure Based Design of New Anti-Cancer Drugs” on Monday in the Science Building, room 319 at 4:15 p.m. On Tuesday he will give a general talk entitled “The Demands Placed on the Modern Pharmaceutical Scientist” at 12 noon in the Science Building, room 319.

Burgin graduated from Wabash College in 1986 and received the Ernest Carscallen Prize in Biology. He attended graduate school at Indiana University and received his Ph.D. in genetics in 1990.

Burgin taught at Wabash College as a visiting assistant professor of chemistry, and then became a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell post-doctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health. In 1995, Burgin joined Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals as a research scientist and became biochemistry group leader. In 1998, Burgin joined the faculty of San Diego State University and became the associate director of the Molecular Biology Institute.

Burgin was awarded the Thomas Cole Alumni Prize from Wabash College in 1999. He also was voted the Most Influential Professor by San Diego State University biology majors and received the biology department’s Teacher Scholar Award for teaching and research excellence in 2000.

The Thomas Cole Lectures in Biology are in honor of Thomas Cole, long-time Norman E. Treves Professor of Biology at the College.

Both lectures are free and open to the public.