May 27, 2020
Building 10, Clinical Center, Masur Auditorium
Margaret Pittman Lecture
The NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series, colloquially known as WALS, is the highest-profile lecture program at the NIH. Lectures occur on most Wednesdays from September through June from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. in Masur Auditorium, Building 10 on the NIH Bethesda campus.
Each season includes some of the biggest names in biomedical and behavioral research. The goal of the WALS is to keep NIH researchers abreast of the latest and most important research in the United States and beyond. An added treat is the annual J. Edward Rall Cultural Lecture, which features top authors and other cultural icons. All speakers are nominated by the NIH community.
Speaker: Eve J. Higginbotham, S.M., M.D.
Dr. Eve Higginbotham is the inaugural Vice Dean for Inclusion and Diversity of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, a position she assumed on August 1, 2013. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics and Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the immediate past president of the AΩA Medical Honor Society and currently serves on the National Academy of Medicine Council and the National Research Council Board. Dr. Higginbotham serves as a member of the Finance Committee of the National Academy of Medicine. Notable prior leadership positions in academia include Dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia, Senior Vice President for Health Sciences at Howard University, and Professor and Chair of the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, a position she held for 12 years.
A graduate of MIT with undergraduate and graduate degrees in chemical engineering (Course X, S.B, and S.M.) and Harvard Medical School, she completed her residency in ophthalmology at the LSU Eye Center and fellowship training in the subspecialty of glaucoma at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. Dr. Higginbotham has served as a member of two federal advisory committees including the Defense Health Board which is advisory to the Secretary of Defense, and the Special Medical Advisory Committee to the Secretary of Veteran Affairs. She is a member of Board of Directors of Ascension, serving as a Chair of the Quality Committee and a member of the Finance, and Audit Committees. She is a member of the Board of the AΩA Medical Honor Society of which she leads the Leadership Development Committee, and Associate Editor of the American Journal of Ophthalmology. She is a Vice Chair of the NEI-supported Ocular Hypertension Treatment Study, a randomized clinical trial, recently funded for a 20-year follow-up study of this unique cohort of patients. She is currently a member of the ARVO, AAO, American Clinical and Climatological Association, National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. newly formed Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology Advisory Board, and the Visiting Committee of the Institute of Medical Engineering and Science at MIT.
Dr. Higginbotham is a former member of the Board of Overseers at Harvard University, former member of the MIT Corporation, and a former chair of the FDA Ophthalmic Devices Panel. She is the past president of the following organizations: the Maryland Society Eye Physicians, the Baltimore City Medical Society, and the Harvard Medical School Alumni Council. She formerly chaired her section of the National Academy of Medicine and is a former member of the NAM membership committee and the Dr. Higginbotham, a practicing glaucoma specialist, has authored over 150 peer-reviewed articles and co-edited four ophthalmology textbooks and continues to remain active in scholarship related to health policy, STEM, and patient care at the University of Pennsylvania.
This lecture will be followed by a reception in the NIH Library. Special thanks to the Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences (FAES) for its support of the weekly reception. FAES is proud to co-sponsor with the NIH in hosting the Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series.
To watch the WALS lecture online, visit http://videocast.nih.gov. Registration is not required; seating is on a first-come, first-served basis. Fire regulations require that every person in Masur Auditorium must have a seat. Standing in the aisles or in the back of the auditorium is not permitted. Sign language interpreters can be provided. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate in this event should contact Jacqueline Roberts, Jacqueline.Roberts@nih.gov, 301-594-6747, or the Federal Relay, 800-877-8339.