Mello, now an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a faculty researcher at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, will be at the University of Delaware on April 23-24 to deliver two talks on different subjects, both related to scientific research.

On Tuesday, April 23, Mello will give the 2019 Arnold Clark Lecture in UD’s Department of Biological Sciences. The talk, which is free and open to the public, begins at 5 p.m. in the Wolf Hall auditorium (Room 100) and will be followed by a reception.

In the lecture, “RNA-Guided Inheritance in C. elegans,” Mello will discuss the research his lab does using the nematode C. elegans as a model system to study gene silencing. Since his 1998 discovery, RNAi has been widely used in basic science as a method to study the function of genes and as a research tool in biology and biomedicine.

“RNAi allows researchers to rapidly ‘knock out’ the expression of specific genes and to thus define the biological functions of those genes,” according to a summary of the upcoming Clark Lecture. Gene silencing has been used “in organisms as diverse as corn and humans,” the summary says.

On Wednesday, April 24, Mello will be the keynote speaker at the inaugural Delaware Life Science Forum, an event designed to bring together UD research scientists — students, faculty, staff and postdocs — with industry scientists and entrepreneurs.

Mello’s industry-focused talk at that event will focus on the use of basic science findings to design new therapeutics.

The forum will be held from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the STAR Tower Audion on UD’s STAR campus. Registration, which includes lunch, is $50 for industry participants, $25 for those from academia and $15 for postdocs and students. Register at this website.

More about Craig Mello and the Clark Lecture

Mello is the Blais University Chair in Molecular Medicine and co-founder of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Before receiving the Nobel Prize, his work on RNAi was recognized with several awards, including the National Academy of Sciences Molecular Biology Award, the Canadian Gairdner International Award, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize and the Dr. Paul Janssen Award for Biomedical Research.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

In his role with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Mello is chair of the national advisory committee that awards the prestigious Pew Biomedical Scholars Award. During his visit to UD, Mellor plans to meet with the University’s three Pew Scholars: Catherine Grimes, April Kloxin and Salil Lachke.

The Arnold M. Clark Memorial Lecture was established by Dr. Howard Hudson, CAS’63, an anesthesiologist in Allentown, Pennsylvania, as a tribute to his professor and undergraduate faculty adviser.

Clark was a professor of biology at UD from 1946-1981 and was instrumental in establishing the graduate program in biology.

His research areas included developmental genetics, aging, human heredity and radiation biology. He studied Down syndrome and pushed for the establishment of a genetic counseling program in Delaware.

Clark’s passion was teaching and mentoring, and he insisted that his undergraduate students take as many non-science courses as possible in order to become well rounded and better able to communicate with the public.