Beckman-Brown Lecture on Interdisciplinary Science
Sharing interdisciplinary science
The Annual Beckman-Brown Lecture on Interdisciplinary Science honors Arnold O. Beckman, the founder of the institute, and Theodore "Ted" Brown, the founding director. The series is funded by a gift from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.
Sharing interdisciplinary science
The Annual Beckman-Brown Lecture on Interdisciplinary Science honors Arnold O. Beckman, the founder of the institute, and Theodore "Ted" Brown, the founding director. The series is funded by a gift from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation.
September 2025 lecture: Catherine Dulac
Catherine Dulac will give this year's lecture at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 10, in the Beckman Auditorium. Dulac is theSamuel W. Morris University Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University.
The day will be a celebration of Founding Director Ted Brown. At 1:15 p.m., the institute will host a ribbon cutting at Ted's Café on its first floor, which is named in Brown's honor. Brown will attend.
A reception will follow both the lecture and ribbon cutting at 3 p.m. in the Beckman Atrium. Please RSVP by Sept. 3.
September 2025 lecture: Catherine Dulac
Catherine Dulac will give this year's lecture at 2 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 10, in the Beckman Auditorium. Dulac is theSamuel W. Morris University Professor in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University.
The day will be a celebration of Founding Director Ted Brown. At 1:15 p.m., the institute will host a ribbon cutting at Ted's Café on its first floor, which is named in Brown's honor. Brown will attend.
A reception will follow both the lecture and ribbon cutting at 3 p.m. in the Beckman Atrium. Please RSVP by Sept. 3.
Lecture abstract
Neurobiology of Sickness and Social Behavior
Social interactions are essential for animals to survive, reproduce, raise their young. Over the years, my lab has attempted to decipher the unique characteristics of social recognition: what are the unique cues that trigger distinct social behaviors, what is the nature and identity of social behavior circuits, how is the function of these circuits different in males and females and how are they modulated by the animal physiological status? In this lecture, I will describe our recent progress in understanding how specific brain circuits and cell types direct adaptive changes in behavior during sickness episodes in mice. Finally, I will describe our recent work uncovering how different parts of the brain as well as discrete, molecularly defined neuronal populations participate in the positive and negative control of the drive for social interactions when animals are isolated or part of a group, providing a new framework to understand the regulation of social behaviors in health and disease.
Recordings of Beckman-Brown lectures
Previous Beckman-Brown Lectures
2024
"The Challenges in Getting to Net-Zero GHG Emissions," Steven Chu. Chu is a Nobel Laureate in Physics as well as the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics, of Molecular and Cellular Physiology, and of Energy Science and Engineering at Stanford University. From January 2009 to April 2013, Dr. Chu served as U.S. Secretary of Energy under President Barack Obama.
2023
"General Anesthesia, Neuromodulation and Altered States of Arousal," Dr. Emery N. Brown. Brown is the Edward Hood Taplin Professor of Medical Engineering and Computational Neuroscience at MIT; the Warren M. Zapol Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School; and an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
2022
"From Seeing to Doing: Understanding and Interacting with the Real World," Fei-Fei Li, the Sequoia Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and Denning Co-Director of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (Oct. 6, 2022).
2021
"Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society," Nicholas A. Christakis, the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University (Oct. 6, 2021).
2020
Unfortunately, the 2020 lecture was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2019
"Cognitive Reserve: An Evolving Concept," Yaakov Stern, professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University (Oct. 3, 2019)
2018
"Predictions: Understanding Global Warming," Dr. Michael Mann, director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center (Oct. 15, 2018)
2017
"Surface Glycans as Cellular IDs," Dr. Laura Kiessling, Department of Chemistry, MIT (Nov. 3, 2017)
2016
"Enzymes by Evolution: Expanding the Scope of Biocatalysis," Dr. Frances Arnold, Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry and director of the Donna and Benjamin M. Rosen Bioengineering Center at California Institute of Technology (Sept. 19, 2016)
Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology