Pictured: from left, Sarah Vickery, Vice President of Scientific Communications & Translational Media, Estée Lauder Companies,
Nadine Pernodet, Senior Vice President of Bioscience, Global R&D, Estée Lauder Companies, Emiliana Borellia, PhD, and Dean Michael J. Stamos, MD.
On July 13-14, nearly 200 distinguished researchers and guests from around the world gathered for the 5th International Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism Symposium and tribute to the late Paolo Sassone-Corsi at the Beckman Center.
The symposium, the Center’s first in four years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, featured an array of interdisciplinary sessions covering transcription, epigenetics, circadian rhythms, and metabolism, areas in which Paolo Sassone-Corsi has made major contributions.
Among the renowned speakers were Nobel Laureate Michael Young from The Rockefeller University, Lasker prize awardees Bob Roeder (Rockefeller University) and Ron Evans (Salk Institute), Mitch Lazar, director of the UPenn Diabetes Institute, Eric Verdin, president of the Buck Institute, Asifa Akhtar director at the Max Planck Institute in Fribourg, Germany, Masao Doi from Kyoto University, and Johan Auwerx from Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne.
The symposium kicked off with a special welcome and tributes to Dr. Sassone-Corsi by UCI School of Medicine Dean Michael J. Stamos and Emeriti Deans Ralph Clayman, MD, and Thomas Cesario, MD, as well as Peter Kaiser, PhD, chair in the Department of Biological Chemistry at the UCI School of Medicine.
At the finale of the first day, Nadine Pernodet, vice president at Estée Lauder Companies, shared a beautiful video of Paolo on circadian rhythms, and announced a gift establishing the Estée Lauder Epigenetics Fellowship in honor of Paolo Sassone-Corsi, supporting emerging scientists to carry on Paolo’s legacy of excellence.
Emiliana Borrelli, PhD, Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at the UCI School of Medicine, Rich Heyman of ORIC Pharma, and March of Dimes Professor Ronald Evans of Salk Institute, were the scientific organizers of the symposium.
View more about the UCI Center for Epigenetics and Metabolism Symposium and watch videos of the presentations here.
The next symposium will be held in 2024, and a new Paolo-Sassone-Corsi Endowed Lectureship will be launched in 2023.