Nobel prize winner visits campus

CREDITED DR. PETER AGRE TALKS ON LEADERSHIP — Agre visits campus to share his experience and years of knowledge in an effort to guide students into careers of science and opportunities for leadership. (On Cuba)

On Thursday and Friday, Hope College’s Natural and Applied Sciences Division will welcome Dr. Peter Agre, as he headlines the annual Gentile Interdisciplinary Lectureship. Agre studied chemistry at Augsburg College and medicine at John Hopkins. Agre went on to join John Hopkins School of Medicine faculty in 1984 and eventually went on to become Professor of Biological Chemistry and Professor of Medicine.

Agre shared the Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovering aquaporins, a family of water channel proteins found throughout nature. They are responsible for numerous psychological processes in humans and are implicated in multiple clinical disorders. Agre will be sharing his knowledge and experiences in two sessions during his visit to the Hope community. Both presentations will take place in Winants Auditorium. The first lecture will take place Friday at 7:30 p.m, entitled “Opening Doors Worldwide through Medical Science.”

The Hope website states Agre’s passion for the topic of leadership in science. Agre shared: “The major lesson I learned from a four-decade career in medical science is that we have a unique opportunity to make the world a better place. The potential of medical science should continue to be explored and is a source of great optimism for an otherwise troubled planet.”

Agre originally began his  research career as a medical student interested in global health. Agre was a student at John Hopkins in the 1970s, working in an international laboratory on the problem of infectious diarrhea. Agre shared: “This work brought me in contact with a group of fascinating and colorful researchers from around the world, and it certainly changed my life.”

The second session will  include Agre’s Nobel Prize work with aquaporins, entitled “Aquaporin Water Channels: From Atomic Structure to Malaria.” This lecture will start on Friday at 3 p.m.

The second sessions dive deeper into the research behind Agre’s findings and what the next step will be. Hope encourages students to come and learn from an experienced researcher in the ways of leadership and scientific discovery.