Dr. Ferid Murad, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Medicine, will be at Michigan Tech May 18 to present the latest lecture in the University's Melvin Calvin Nobel Laureate Series.
Murad, who won the Nobel Prize with colleagues Dr. Robert Furchgott and Dr. Louis Ignarro for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system, is scheduled to speak at 10:30 a.m. in room U115 of the Minerals and Materials Engineering Building. At 2:00 p.m., a white pine will be planted in Murad's honor in the Nobel Laureate Grove adjacent to the M&M Building.
Both the lecture and tree planting ceremony are open to the public at no charge. Refreshments will be served at the latter event.
The work of Murad and his associates in demonstrating the cellular functions of nitric oxide in the human body has been described as "surprising," "startling," and even "a sensation" by the Nobel Prize committee. Their work has applications not only in the study of the cardiovascular system, but also for bacterial infections, cancer, impotence, inflammatory diseases, the olfactory function, the nervous system, and possibly memory.
Murad has held administrative positions with the medical programs at the University of Virginia, Stanford and Northwestern, and has also served as Chief of Medicine at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Medical Center in California. He is currently affiliated with the Department of Integrative Biology, Pharmacology, and Physiology at the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, Texas.
He received his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from the Western Reserve University School of Medicine in Cleveland, Ohio.
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05/09/00-MTN290