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CHAPEL HILL, NC – Jenny Ting, PhD, Alumni Distinguished Professor in UNC’s Department of Microbiology and Immunology, delivered the 2010 Berryhill Lecture on November 3. The lecture and reception were held at the Carolina Club.

Dr. Ting is the William Rand Kenan Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, founding Director of the Center for Translational Immunology, Co-Director of the Inflammatory Disease Institute, immunology program leader at UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Co-Director of the Southeast Regional Centers of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Disease. At the beginning of this year, she became a member of the advisory board for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, one of the 27 Institutes and Centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); in this four-year position she will advise the director about the direction of the NIH.

“Dr. Ting is a UNC treasure,” says Marschall Runge, MD, Executive Dean for the School of Medicine. “She has been a mentor for many of our very best young investigators and is a role model for us all. She leads by example, always exhibiting a thoughtful and insightful approach to scientific and other challenges. Dr. Ting’s leadership here has allowed UNC to recruit an outstanding cadre of scientists, and she has worked tirelessly to help all be successful. Her own research program in immune mechanisms and inflammatory diseases is world renowned.”

Dr. Ting’s passion and commitment to the study of science has stemmed from her desire to make new discoveries, to cultivate young scientists and to procure respect for her field. “Academic scientists have to work very hard; there is no question about it,” she says. “However I absolutely love science; I love discovery. I am delighted to see other people come to appreciate the beauty of science.”

The Norma Berryhill Distinguished Lecture began in 1985. Established to honor the medical school’s “most able scientists and scholars,” the lectureship is named after the late Norma Berryhill, whose late husband, Dr. Walter Reece Berryhill, was dean of the school from 1941 to 1964. Along with her husband, she is considered the co-founder of UNC’s four-year School of Medicine. While honoring an eminent member of the School of Medicine faculty, the Norma Berryhill Distinguished Lecture series serves as an occasion to welcome new faculty members in an academic convocation and to further the sense of community created and nurtured by Mrs. Berryhill.

Photos taken by Brian Strickland.