Nobel-Prize-winning structural biologist Dr. Venki Ramakrishnan will deliver an Academia Sinica Lecture entitled “My Adventures in the Ribosome”. The lecture, a part of the 2023 Academia Sinica Lecture Series, will take place on August 11, 2023 in the International Conference Hall (3F) of the Humanities and Social Sciences Building. General public and members of the media are welcome.

Dr. Ramakrishnan is a Group Leader at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at Cambridge, England. His Noble-Prize-winning research is dedicated to solving the structure of ribosome, the protein-synthesis factory in the cell as well as to dissecting the mechanism on how genetic information is translated from messenger RNA into chains of amino acids to form proteins. In 2000, Dr. Ramakrishnan and his research team resolved the structure of ribosomes to the atomic level using X-ray crystallography, thus providing unprecedented insights into the mechanism and fidelity of the protein synthesis. More recently, Dr. Ramakrishnan has used electron microscopy to visualize ribosomes in higher organisms, further advancing our understanding of ribosome’s function and on how antibiotics inhibit protein synthesis. For his work on the structure and function of ribosomes, Dr. Ramakrishnan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2009.

In recognition of his outstanding contributions, Dr. Ramakrishnan was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the European Molecular Biology Organization, and served as a Foreign Member of the Indian National Science Academy. In 2015, he was elected as President of the Royal Society, to which he served a five-year term.

In his lecture in the 2023 Academia Sinica Lecture Series, Dr. Ramakrishnan will share his lifelong pursuit toward unraveling the ribosome structure as well as his pivotal career switch from physics to molecular biology.

Established in 2009, the Academia Sinica Lecture Series features pre-eminent scholars across the world as speakers for sharing their awesomely inspiring scientific journey and paradigm-changing research contributions to the human knowledge.

Time: 10:00 to 11:50, Friday, August 11, 2023
Venue: International Conference Hall (3F), Humanities and Social Sciences Building (HSSB), Academia Sinica
Online Registration: https://reurl.cc/aVbxz9
Note: The lecture will be delivered in English.