Celebrate Research Week: Wyman Lecture and the Killam Conversation

March 02, 2012 4:00 PM

Each year at the UBC's Celebrate Research Week delivers on the promise of its name with dozens of fascinating and informative events open to the UBC community and the general public.

One of the most prestigious event of Celebrate Research Week is the annual Wyman Lecture and the Killam Conversation. This year it is being held on Friday, March 2, 2012, 4-6 pm in the Dodson Room (#302) at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall (V6T 1Z1). Everyone is cordially invited to attend.

This year's Wyman Lecture is presented by Dr. Robert G. Evans, O.C., Professor Emeritus, Economics and Centre for Health Services and Policy Research, UBC.

Lecture Details:
"It Seemed Like a Good Idea... Innovation in a Wider Context"
The conviction that innovation will make the world a better place seems at present virtually universal. Research is then celebrated as the key to more rapid innovation, although the connection is not as direct as we researchers would like to think. But the recent success of Dutch researchers in genetically modifying the highly lethal H5N1 (bird flu) virus to make it more readily transmissible among humans, might at least give us pause. More generally, the inevitability of both unintended consequences, and of intended but malign consequences, implies that the uncritical celebration and promotion of innovation must rest on an underlying presumption either that innovations are universally, on balance, benign, or that our societies embody processes to screen out or suppress any adverse effects. Good luck with that.

The Killam Conversation is generated between Dr. Evans and a panel of UBC-based scholars:

Dr. Michael Law (moderator)
Faculty, Centre for Health Services and Policy Research,
Assistant Professor, School of Population and Public Health

Dr. Gillian Hanley
Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Population and Public Health

Ms. Lindsay Hedden
PhD Candidate, School of Population and Public Health

Dr. Barbara Mintzes
Member, Drug Assessment Working Group, Therapeutics Initiative
Assistant Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics

Dr. Craig Mitton
Senior Scientist, Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Evaluation, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, VGH
Associate Professor, School of Population and Public Health

The event demonstrates the tremendous contributions of the Killam Trusts to advance research at UBC, supporting faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. The Wyman Lecture is in honour of the late Robert Wyman, Killam Trustee (1987-2007) and Chancellor Emeritus of UBC. Mr. John Montalbano, a Killam Trustee, will introduce the event.

odson Room (#302)

Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall (V6T 1Z1)