News Release
Date: November 14, 2006
Media Contact: Elizabeth Homan, 301-251-7970; Steve Simon, 301-251-7952
Montgomery College Hosts Spectrum Lecture on AIDS
National Cancer Institute’s Cheryl Winkler to Talk at Germantown Campus, Nov. 30
The National Cancer Institute’s Dr. Cheryl Winkler will speak at Montgomery College-Germantown on Thursday, Nov. 30, as part of the College’s 2006 Spectrum Lecture Series. Her talk, entitled “Human Genetic Variation and the HIV-1 AIDS Pandemic: Are Some People More Likely to Contract AIDS Than Others?” will take place at 7:30 p.m. in Globe Hall, which is located in the High Technology and Science Center, 20200 Observation Drive, Germantown, Md. This event is free and open to the public. Like all Spectrum Lectures, Dr. Winkler’s presentation is designed for a non-scientific audience, enabling scientists, students, and the community to learn about ground-breaking advancements in science. She will examine the global AIDS epidemic, drawing on her own experiences in southern Africa and China, including a look at the social, cultural, and biological reasons for differences in HIV-1 prevalence. Dr. Winkler will discuss her work investigating the role of human genetic variation in infection susceptibility and rate of progression to AIDS. For the last 25 years, Dr. Winkler has been a genetic epidemiologist, investigating how host genetic variation influences susceptibility to infectious diseases. She has spent her career at the National Institutes of Health. Currently, she is the head of the Molecular Genetics Epidemiology Laboratory at the National Cancer Institute in Frederick, Md. Dr. Winkler earned a B.S. from the State University of New York in Albany and her Ph.D. in immunogenetics from the University of Maryland. For more information about the Spectrum Lecture, contact Dr. Susan Bontems, assistant professor of chemistry, by email at susan.bontems@montgomerycollege.edu or call 301-353-7740. # # # Montgomery College is a public, open admissions community college with campuses in Germantown, Rockville, and Takoma Park/Silver Spring, plus workforce development/continuing education centers and off-site programs throughout Montgomery County, Md. The College serves more than 55,000 students a year, through both credit and noncredit programs, in more than 100 areas of study.