Dr. William Duax, Crystallographer, Sage, Rapper, ...

Dr. Duax traveled from Buffalo, NY to visit family and friends in New Orleans and to give a compelling talk on the function, structural characterization and bioinformatic isolation of a 50 member family of short-chain oxidoreductases. At our regular Thursday seminar he introduced many or our students to the utility of the PDB to scientists armed with a background in biochemistry and crystallography. Like before a wise and well traveled grandfather we sat and listened to a convincing characterization of a rare catalytic amino acid "heptad" and a substrate binding motif as it was teased from the dark corners of hypervariable protein sequences in the ever expanding protein sequence database.

From Xavier

It was my pleasure to get sneak peek at his presentation and learn of his sincere desire to get African American students to Buffalo to work in his lab. I share our conversation with you in My Office Hours.

From Xavier

For the Windows Media crowd click here.

Dr. Lovell Jones, Director, Center for Research on Minority Health

From Xavier

It was certainly a pleasure having Dr. Jones come to Xavier University and to speak to students about health disparaties within the minority and poor communities in this country. He made us all aware of the gaps in our collective minds of how healthcare in this country although being the best in the world is not always impartial in the way it treats its citizens. Dr. Lovell also pointed us toward pioneers in the healthcare industry not only to pay homage to Black History month but to inspire our students in pursuit of healthcare professions.

I enjoyed talking with Dr. Lovell personally. Although wanting to podcast our meeting you will see from simply his titles, let alone his resume, my hesitation. He is beyond the scope of my editorial so I spent the time with him and listened as any student would listen to his or her mentor.

Lovell A. Jones, Ph.D.
Founder, Biennial Symposium Series on Minorities, the Medically Underserved & Cancer
Cofounder, Intercultural Cancer Council
Professor of Health Disparities Research
Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Director, Center for Research on Minority Health
Center of Excellence in Partnerships for Community Outreach and Research on Disparities in Health and Training (EXPORT)
Health Disparities Education, Awareness, Research & Training (HDEART) Consortium
University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

From Xavier