COVID-19 Pandemic: The Road to Recovery

Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D.
President and Carson Family Professor
The Rockefeller University

In conversation with

Jeanne Garbarino, Ph.D.
Director, RockEDU Science Outreach
The Rockefeller University

As the novel coronavirus quickly escalated to pandemic proportions, scientists began doing what they do best – consider what questions need to be asked to understand, treat, and prevent infection. Who is most susceptible to SARS-CoV-2? What can we learn from low-risk patients who unexpectedly develop severe infection? Does this virus resemble any others for which remedies have already been identified and could be used as a model? In our final event of the 2021 Talking Science webinar series, President Richard P. Lifton, in conversation with Dr. Jeanne Garbarino, will explore the scientific journey through the COVID-19 pandemic, with its obstacles and breakthroughs, that has led us to where we are today and what we have learned for our tomorrow.

Richard P. Lifton, M.D., Ph.D., a physician-scientist, became the eleventh president of The Rockefeller University in 2016. He pioneered the use of genetics and genomics to understand fundamental mechanisms underlying cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, kidney disease, cancer, and congenital disorders. He is best known for discovering the genes underlying hypertension, a leading cause of death. This established increased renal salt reabsorption as the leading cause of hypertension, informing public health strategies to prevent and treat this disease. Dr. Lifton also developed exome sequencing, a method for rapidly and inexpensively sequencing all the protein-coding portions of the genome. He has led the application of this technology for the discovery of new disease genes and for clinical diagnosis.