VA-MD Vet Med - Research Symposium

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25th Annual Research Symposium
March 20, 2014

The Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine will hold its twenty-fifth Annual Research Symposium on Thursday, March 20, 2014. The event will showcase graduate student and faculty research and will feature keynote speaker Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D, Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University.

The symposium is sponsored by Pfizer and the Office of Research & Graduate Studies.

2014 Symposium Program & Proceedings

Symposium Program (PDF)
Symposium Proceedings (PDF)

2014 Symposium Keynote Speaker - Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D.

Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D. Vincent Racaniello is Higgins Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. He received an A.B. degree in Biology from Cornell University in 1974, and the Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine of the City University of New York, where he worked on influenza viruses with Dr. Peter Palese. After postdoctoral work with Dr. David Baltimore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1982 he joined the Columbia University faculty.

Dr. Racaniello is the recipient of an Irma T. Hirschl Career Scientist Award, the Searle Scholars Award, the Eli Lilly Award of the American Society for Microbiology in 1992, and an NIH Merit Award. He was a Harvey Society Lecturer, University Lecturer at Columbia University, the First Lamb Professor at Vanderbilt University and presented the Hilleman Lecture at the University of Chicago. Dr. Racaniello has served as an editor for the Journal of Virology, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, PLoS Pathogens, and mBio. He was a member of the WHO Steering Committee on Hepatitis/Polio, Chair of the Virology Study Section of the NIH, and Co-Chair of the Gordon Conference on Viruses and Cells.

He is co-author of a leading virology textbook, "Principles of Virology"; writes virology blog (virology.ws); and produces three podcasts: "This Week in Virology," "This Week in Parasitism" and "This Week in Microbiology." Racaniello's virology courses on iTunes University have engaged 120,000 students in the past two years, while nearly 50,000 students have taken his two Coursera offerings.

The research in Dr. Racaniello's laboratory has focussed on the mechanisms of poliovirus replication and pathogenesis. His work produced the first infectious clone of an RNA virus, the discovery of the cell receptor for poliovirus, and the establishment of a transgenic mouse model for poliomyelitis. These contributions have revolutionized the study of animal RNA viruses.