Shirley M. Tilghman, president of Princeton University and professor of molecular biology, will be the keynote speaker for Research ShowCASE 2003.

Research ShowCASE will be CWRU's first-ever day devoted solely to displaying research at the University and its affiliated institutions. It will take place from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 4 in the Veale Convocation and Recreation Center. Along with research displays from across the University, the day will include a vendor exhibit, awards to graduate students for the best poster and a series of panel discussions.

All CWRU faculty, researchers, post-doctoral associates and graduate students are invited to display their work, as are researchers from the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, the Louis Stokes Cleveland Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center, MetroHealth Medical Center and University Hospitals. Attendance at the event is free and open to the public.

"We are delighted that President Tilghman will be keynoting Research ShowCASE," said Eric Cottington, CWRU's associate vice president for research administration. "Her stature in both the scientific and academic communities emphasizes the historic significance of this day, and will help to draw visitors to the event from the wider community."

Tilghman was named president of Princeton in May 2001. She joined the university's faculty in 1986 as the Howard A. Prior Professor of the Life Sciences. In 1988 she also joined the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as an investigator and began serving as an adjunct professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School. In 1998 she became founding director of Princeton's multi-disciplinary Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.

A member of the National Research Council's committee that set the blueprint for the U.S. effort in the Human Genome Project, Tilghman also was one of the founding members of the National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project Initiative for the National Institutes of Health.

In addition to her research, Tilghman is known for her national leadership on behalf of women in science and for promoting efforts to make the early careers of young scientists as meaningful and productive as possible. She received national attention for a report on "Trends in the Careers of Life Scientists" that was issued in 1998 by a committee she chaired for the National Research Council.

The program for Research ShowCASE starts with setup from 7-8 a.m., followed by opening remarks from James W. Wagner, CWRU provost, and a continental breakfast for presenters and corporate sponsors from 8-9 a.m. Vendor exhibits are from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., as are panel discussions in the multipurpose room of Veale. Discussions include biotechnology from 9-9:45 a.m.; power from 10-10:45 a.m.; instrumentation, controls and electronics from 11-11:45 a.m.; technology transfer from noon to 12:45 p.m.; and humanities from 1-1:45 p.m. Graduate student awards begin at 1:45 p.m. Tilghman's keynote speech is from 2-3 p.m., followed by refreshments and tear down from 3-4 p.m.

The deadline for submitting abstracts for research to be displayed at the event is January 10. For more information about Research ShowCASE visit the Web site at http://www.cwru.edu/menu/showcase/ or call 368-4515.