Biosciences director awarded prestigious lectureship

The world's largest Physiological Society has honoured the Director of the School of Biosciences, Professor Ole Petersen FRS, with the 2013 award of the Society's Horace W Davenport Distinguished Lectureship.

The American Physiological Society, which has over 10,000 members, has invited Professor Petersen to give the one-hour Award Lecture at the Experimental Biology (EB) 2013 meeting on Tuesday afternoon, 23 April, 2013. The lecture will be delivered at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Centre.

'Calcium signal mechanisms in epithelial cells: roles in physiology and pathology' will be the theme of the lecture. EB is the world's largest annual general biology congress and attendance at this year's event is estimated to be 15,000.

The Chair of the American Physiological Society's Gastrointestinal and Liver Section, Professor Marshall Montrose, stated that "the Horace W Davenport Distinguished Lectureship is the most prestigious recognition offered by the Gastrointestinal and Liver Section of the American Physiological Society" and that "the award recognizes distinguished lifetime achievement in gastrointestinal and liver physiological research".

The Davenport Lecture is generally given by top US investigators and has only previously been delivered by two European scientists, namely by the late Sir James Black FRS, King's College London (Nobel Laureate) in 1994 and by Prof Geoff Burnstock FRS, University College London in 2001.