Maria Goeppert-Mayer Interdisciplinary Symposium Gets Underway

Published 04/06/2006

Scientists and engineers from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) as well as students form the surrouding Universities and Junior colleges will attend the eleventh annual Maria Goeppert-Mayer Interdisciplinary Symposium (MGM) held April 7 and 8, 2006 on the University of San Diego campus. The event will feature keynote presentations from women in science and technology representing a variety of scientific fields including optical sciences, pharmaceuticals, chemistry and neuroendocrinology.

Named in honor of the co-winner of the 1963 Nobel Prize in physics, the event focuses on fundamental, interdisciplinary scientific achievements as well as encouraging career development for both students and scientists. The 2006 meeting will feature four invited scientific speakers, several additional presentations and a poster session including three poster awards. Logon to the MGM Symposium Web site for the conference schedule and registration information.

Invited scientific speakers include Marilyn Perrin of The Salk Institute, who will speak on "Molecules of Stress: Peptides and receptors -- from sequence to three-dimensional structure;" Linda Hsieh-Wilson, professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who will speak on "Decoding Structure: Activity relationships of carbohydrates in the brain;" Jilly Evans, vice president of Amira Pharmaceuticals, who will speak on "Therapeutic Opportunities in the Leukotriene Pathway;" and Rhonda Morgan, from the California Institute of Technology's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who will speak about "The History of Orion Through the Eyes of Telescopes and the Future Prospects for Detecting Life."

Goeppert-Mayer was a professor of physics at UCSD from 1960 until her death in 1972. When she received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for her work on the shell theory of the nucleus, she was the first woman to receive that award since Marie Curie in 1903. A biography of Maria Goeppert-Mayer can be found on the Web.

This year's MGM symposium is sponsored by SDSC, the American Chemical Society, Invitrogen Corporation, Johnson & Johnson PRD, the National Institutes of Health National Biomedical Computation Resource; Pfizer and the University of San Diego.