MIT Visiting Professor Harvey Lodish to honour UHAS with week-long visit

Report by Maria Gwira, Director of Public Affairs.

World renowned molecular and cell biologist, Professor Harvey Franklin Lodish, will pay a special visit to University of Health and Allied Sciences, from September 25 to 30, this year. UHAS is honoured to be the first stop on the Ghana leg of his two-nation visit to Africa that will include Malawi and Ghana. The week-long programme will feature the Professor engaging UHAS management, faculty and students in a series of seminar-style lectures, workshops and interactions. He will also tour the UHAS campus as well as sites of interest across the Volta Region.

» Download the programme

This visit will be particularly significant for UHAS, a relatively young, science-focused public university in Ghana that is making significant inroads in supplying highly skilled health and allied science professionals to the workforce. Prof. Lodish is the Lead Author of Molecular Cell Biology, a core textbook used in several Schools at UHAS. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of Seeding Labs, whose mission is to make high quality laboratory equipment available to universities and research institutions in locations where they will make the greatest global impact.

Prof. Lodish is a professor of biology and biological engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an associate (foreign) member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. He received the 2010 Mentoring Award from the American Society of Hematology and the 2016 American Society for Cell Biology WICB Sandra K. Masur Senior Leadership Mentoring Award.

Two of his postdoctoral fellows are Nobel Prize recipients, and eight of his students and fellows are members of the National Academy of Sciences or the National Academy of Medicine.

He has founded and served as a scientific advisory expert for many biotechnology companies, as an advisor and consultant for several governmental science bodies, and has been a key advisor for Boston’s growth into a world-class hub for biotechnology.