Holt-Lunstad to present Knobil Lecture
The McGovern Medical School Office of Research Affairs welcomes Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University, as the 2024 speaker for the annual Ernst Knobil Distinguished Lecture, March 5.
Holt-Lunstad, the director of the Society, Behavior, and Health International Studies Program at BYU, will present on “Social Connection and Health: Past, Present, and Future.” The lecture begins at 10:50 a.m., March 5, in the Beth Robertson Auditorium at the Brown Foundation Institute for Molecular Medicine (1825 Pressler St.) and serves as the keynote for the annual McGovern Medical School Research Retreat.
Holt-Lunstad is an international scientific expert whose research focuses on the individual and population health effects, biological mechanisms, and effective strategies to mitigate risk and promote protection associated with social connection. Her research has been seminal in the recognition of social isolation and loneliness as risk factors for early mortality. She has served as a member of multiple National Academy of Sciences consensus committees, the UK Cross Departmental Loneliness Team, European Joint Research Council, World Health Organization the Gravity Project, Commit to Connect, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Ernst Knobil Distinguished Lecture was established in 2001 to honor Dr. Ernst Knobil, who served as the third dean of McGovern Medical School from 1981-84, and was one of the world’s leading neuroendocrinologists whose work has provided the basis for the understanding of reproductive function in women.
His work, spanning five decades, localized the pulse generator in the hypothalamus controlling the neuropeptide gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GNRH) that serves as the basis for the understanding of the 28-day ovulatory menstrual cycle. This led to the successful treatment of women suffering with infertility of hypothalamic origin with over 90 percent success rate in achieving pregnancy.
For more information about Knobil and the lecture series, visit the event’s website.