Professor Richard Wurtman, director of the Clinical Research Center, and Professor Robert Rubin, director of the Center for Experimental Pharmacology and Therapeutics, will be among the speakers at an educational forum on "The Management of Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals" to be held in Rm 6-120 next Saturday, Nov. 6 from 9am-5pm.
The purpose of the forum, which is being organized by the New Horizons Club, a student-run club at MIT, is to explore research and product development at both pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, including the financial side of the industries. The forum is free and open to the public; no registration is required. It will feature a different speaker every hour.
The New Horizons Club held its first meeting during IAP 1999 and has now evolved into a group of about 20 students and 10 faculty members who meet twice monthly for wide-ranging discussion of diverse topics such as military defense spending, US-China relations, and Social Security. Additional faculty members are often invited as guests to meetings when the topic is in their particular area of expertise.
"Prior to each meeting, members review a selection of articles that set the stage for a lively and thought-provoking evening of discussion," said co-president Michele deMarco, a senior in biology who founded the club to encourage more interaction between faculty and students outside classes and to address issues not focussed on in course curricula, such as the impact of technologies on current social and political events.
"We chose to have a big event in order to reach a larger number of people," said the other co-president, Neena S. Kadaba, a sophomore in chemistry. "The goal of our club is really to educate people, and while our meetings significantly exemplify this goal, they do reach a limited number of people."
Other speakers at Saturday's forum will include David Sherris, COO and director of drug development at OXiGENE, Inc.; Philip Holberton, CFO of Genome Therapeutics Corp.; and Fred Paster (SB 1988), vice president of new business ventures, the Medicines Company.
For a complete schedule of the day's activities, see the New Horizons Club web site. To find out more information, send e-mail to newhorizonsclub@hotmail.com.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on November 3, 1999.
