The Keck Seminar Series, begun in 1990, focuses on contemporary interdisciplinary science involving quantitative or computational, biomedical informatics and data science, bioinformatics, chemical, and/or physical approaches to biological and biomedical problems. The speakers, selected by a committee of GCC-supported trainees, are drawn from GCC institutions, and institutions nationwide. Everyone is welcome to attend. You can find recordings from certain past seminars on our YouTube page.
The Keck Seminar Series is also a 1-credit graduate course at Rice University, BIOS 592 Topics in Quantitative Biology & Biomedical Informatics. Seminars are also offered online via Zoom; however, trainees affiliated with GCC training programs are required to attend the seminars in person, except those at UT Medical Branch at Galveston.
Fall 2025 Keck Seminars will begin on September 5, and the final seminar will be on December 5. Seminars take place from 4:00-5:15 pm Fridays in Rice University’s BioScience Research Collaborative (BRC) room 280. Rice map.
Those not on the Keck Seminar listserv are to please contact Elizabeth Lawrence for the Zoom login information for a particular seminar; it is not the same every week.
If you would like to receive the Keck Seminar listserv weekly reminders, please email Elizabeth Lawrence.
For questions, speaker suggestions, or to join our trainee Keck Seminar planning committee, email Elizabeth Lawrence or Jim Briggs.
Keck Seminar Series - Spring 2025
September 5, 2025 Cassidy Johnson, PhD
Assistant Teaching Professor, BioSciences; Director, Lynn R. Lowrey Arboretum
Rice University
Seminar Title: Teaching: The Other STEM Career!
Host: Jared Slone
September 12, 2025 Shinya Yamamoto, DVM, PhD
Associate Professor, Molecular & Human Genetics
Baylor College of Medicine
Seminar Title: Using Drosophila to Discover and Study New Human Disease-Causing Genes
Host: Ellen Thompson
September 19, 2025 Rachel Arey, PhD
Assistant Professor, Molecular and Cellular Biology, Center for Precision Environmental Health
Baylor College of Medicine
Seminar Title: Mining the Mind of a Worm: Using C. elegans to Study Behavioral Neuroscience
Host: Ty Gadberry
September 26, 2025 Caleb Bashor, PhD
Assistant Professor, Bioengineering
Rice University
Seminar Title: Engineering Synthetic Regulatory Networks in Human Cells
Host: Christina van Hal
October 3, 2025 Colin McCoin, PhD – ZOOM ONLY
Research Assistant Professor, Molecular and Integrative Physiology
University of Kansas Medical Center
Seminar Title: The Impact of Diet and Exercise on Mitochondrial Health in Liver and Skeletal Muscle: A Sex-Specific Analysis
Host: Ellen Thompson
October 10, 2025 Li-av Segev Zarko, PhD
Assistant Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
UT Medical Branch at Galveston
Seminar Title: From Molecules to Infection: Revealing How Parasites Invade Host Cells
Host: Ty Gadberry
November 7, 2025 C. David Fuller, MD, PhD
Professor, Department of Radiation Oncology
UT MD Anderson Cancer Center
Seminar Title: FAIR & Open Science – Considerations for Emerging Scientists in the Era of Big Data
Host: Saleh Ramezani
November 14, 2025 Juliane Sempionatto, PhD
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rice University
Seminar Title: Wearable Electrochemical Sensors for Non-Invasive Health Monitoring
Host: Matt Cheung
November 21, 2025 Danielle Wu, PhD
Assistant Professor, Diagnostic and Biomedical Sciences
UT Health Science Center at Houston School of Dentistry
Title: TBD
Host: Saleh Ramezani
December 5, 2025 SaraH Zanders, PhD – ZOOM ONLY
Associate Professor and Vice Dean of the Graduate School
Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO
Seminar Title: WTF Evolution
Host: Ellen Thompson
GCC Member Institutions
