Distinguished Faculty Lecture: Rafael A. Fissore
Rafael A. Fissore, professor of veterinary and animal sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, will give the second of four Distinguished Faculty Lectures on Tuesday, December 9 at 4:00 p.m. in the Massachusetts Room of the Mullins Center. The talk is free and open to the public.
Fissore's talk is titled "Activating the Egg: A Tale of Mice, Pigs, and Men." He will discuss how the egg, the female gamete, always emerges from the ovary arrested in its development. Exactly how the sperm "activates" the egg has long been a mystery. Fissore will explain what his research team has discovered about mammalian fertilization using mice and pigs, and most recently studying infertile men, and what these findings hold for new treatments for infertility, along with their ethical implications.
Fissore joined the university in 1993. His research looks at understanding the mechanism by which the sperm is able to induce activation and trigger development in mammalian eggs. This research has implications for understanding reproduction and the development of new treatments for infertility and the ethical questions such treatment will raise. He was an assistant professor from 1993-98, an associate professor from 1999-2007, and has been a professor since 2007. He also served as a visiting professor in the department of physiology at Katholiek Universeit of Leuven in Leuven, Belguim in 2003. Fissore also served as an embryologist in the in-vitro fertilization program at Brigham and Women's Hospital's department of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology and Harvard Medical School from 1990-93. He was also a veterinary assistant in the veterinary practice of Dr. Roberto Magnasco in Canals, Cordoba, Argentina in 1983-84.
Fissore earned a degree as a veterinary surgeon from the University of Buenos Aires in 1983; was a resident at the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of California, Davis from 1984-88; earned a master of preventive veterinary medicine from the University of California Davis is 1988; earned a diplomate ACT from the American College of Theriogenology in 1988, and earned a doctorate in veterinary and animal sciences from UMass Amherst in 1993. Professor Fissore also served as a postdoctoral fellow in reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston from 1988-89.
The other participants in this year's series are Weibo Gong, electrical and computer engineering, who will give a lecture titled "Will the Internet Soon Outsmart Humans?" on Monday, February 23, 2009, and Sally I. Powers, psychology, who will discuss "Hormones and Lovers' Quarrels: How Stress Translates Into Depression" on Monday, April 27, 2009.
A reception follows each talk. Faculty members in the series receive a Chancellor's Medal following their lecture. The Chancellor's Medal is the highest honor bestowed on individuals for exemplary and extraordinary service to the campus. The lecture series is sponsored by the offices of the chancellor and the provost.
