Geiger gives Narayan Memorial Lecture at 30th Meeting of the Society on Neuroimmune Pharmacology

Dr. Jonathan Geiger, Chester Fritz Distinguished Professor in the UND Department of Biomedical Sciences, recently presented the Opendra “Bill” Narayan Memorial Lecture at the 30th Annual Meeting of the Society on Neuroimmune Pharmacology (SNIP). His lecture, “Lysosomes Serve Important Roles in the Pathogenesis of Neurodegenerative Diseases, as well as the Safety and Efficacy of Modern Pharmacotherapeutics,” was one of five featured talks at the four-day conference.

In 2015, Geiger won the top research prize (The Wybran Award) offered by SNIP. And in 2016, he served as the President of SNIP.

The lecture’s namesake, Dr. Narayan, was faculty at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and served as the Director of the Retrovirus Biology Laboratory. In 1992, Dr. Narayan left Johns Hopkins and became a faculty member at the University of Kansas, where he was named Distinguished Professor and Director of the Marion Merrell Dow Laboratory of Viral Pathogenesis. He enjoyed a very productive career at the University of Kansas until his untimely death in 2007.

Dr. Geiger was fortunate to have known Dr. Narayan. They were originally introduced to each other in Winnipeg, Manitoba, when two colleagues, Drs. Avi Nath and Chris Power, invited Dr. Narayan to the University of Manitoba to deliver a guest seminar. Later, Drs. Narayan and Geiger both served as Principal Investigators of Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (CoBRE) grants and attended meetings for the funded centers.

Congratulations, Dr. Geiger!