Research Week Banquet Benefit For Hope

The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) Graduate Student Association (GSA) will host the Research Week Banquet Benefit for Hope at 6:30 p.m. March 6 at the McKenzie-Merket Alumni Center, 17^th Street and University Avenue.

Distinguished guests will include Martin Chalfie, Ph.D., Nobel Prize Laureate in Chemistry 2008 and professor of biological sciences at Columbia University; and Lee Josephson, Ph.D., with the Center for Advanced Medical Imaging Sciences at the Massachusetts General Hospital Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and Harvard Medical School.

Every year Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences (GSBS) students organize Student Research Week to showcase the next generation of biomedical researchers and their work and invite distinguished national and international speakers to present discoveries on a specific theme as chosen by students.

Dhyanesh Patel, GSA president, said the GSA wanted to celebrate those who worked to organize Student Research Week and also raise funds to honor a past professor.

“GSA is the student group for GSBS. What a better way to celebrate research week than to honor Dr. Harry Weitlauf, a man who impacted many TTUHSC students,” Patel said. “The best way to accomplish that is to support the Hope Lodge with the proceeds from this banquet.”

The American Cancer Society Hope Lodge provides free temporary housing in a nurturing environment for cancer patients and their family members or caregiver. Harry Weitlauf, Ph.D., professor emeritus who served as the chair of the TTUHSC Department of Cell Biology & Biochemistry for more than 30 years, worked to bring Hope Lodge to Lubbock.

Sasanka Ramanadham, Ph.D., also will be presented the 2012 Distinguished Alumni Award. He is a professor of Cell, Developmental and Integrative Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

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