The Founders Day lectureship was established in 1979 to recognize and honor UA College of Medicine faculty for their scientific accomplishments. Each year, faculty members select one of their peers to provide a presentation to commemorate the founding of the College of Medicine. The College was dedicated on Nov. 17, 1967.
The recipient of this award is a faculty member who embodies a model of an investigator whose research work has a continuous thread of significance and who can effectively present that research with enthusiasm, vigor and inspiration.
This year's recipient, Stephen H. Wright, PhD, professor, Department of Physiology, University of Arizona College of Medicine, and UA Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biophysics, will give a free presentation, open to the public, titled, “There and Back Again.”
Dr. Wright’s research focuses on the kidney. The body is routinely subjected to a form of “chemical warfare” -- the foods we eat and the medicines we ingest contain compounds that are, to one extent or another, toxic. It is virtually impossible to avoid such exposure, but the body has a strategy to deal with it: the kidney, which efficiently clears these compounds from the body. Dr. Wright’s research is aimed at determining the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which the kidney transports these compounds.
A reception immediately follows in the DuVal Auditorium foyer.