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The 2025 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize Lectures

Columbia will award the 2025 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize to Drs. Kevin Campbell, Louis Kunkel, and Eric Olson for discoveries that revealed the biological causes of Duchenne muscular dystrophy and provide the foundation for breakthrough treatments for this and related muscular diseases. Each awardee will present a lecture on March 12, 2026. Lecture details will be published below when confirmed.

Lecture 1

presented by

Louis Kunkel, PhD

Louis Kunkel, PhD

Professor of Genetics and Pediatrics
Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School

Thursday, March 12, 2026
Location TBA

Biography

Louis Kunkel, PhD, received his BA from Gettysburg College and his PhD from Johns Hopkins University. He then conducted postdoctoral research at the University of California, San Francisco before joining Harvard University in 1982, first as an instructor and then as an associate professor. Kunkel is now a professor of genetics and pediatrics at Harvard University and director of the Genomics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.

Lecture 2

presented by

Kevin Campbell, PhD

Roy J. Carver Biomedical Research Chair in Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
Professor of Neurology
Chair, Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics
Director, Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Specialized Research Center
University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine

Kevin Campbell, PhD

Thursday, March 12, 2026
Location TBA

Biography

Kevin Campbell, PhD, received his BS in physics from Manhattan College and his PhD in biophysics from the University of Rochester. He completed his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Toronto before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Iowa in 1981. Campbell is currently Roy J. Carver Professor and Chair of the Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics and director of the Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Specialized Research Center at the University of Iowa, and an investigator emeritus of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Lecture 3

presented by

Eric Olson, PhD

Eric Olson, PhD

Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Science
Annie and Willie Nelson Professorship in Stem Cell Research
Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects
Professor and Chair, Department of Molecular Biology
Director, Hamon Center for Regenerative Science and Medicine
Director, Wellstone Muscular Dystrophy Specialized Research Center
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas

Thursday, March 12, 2026
Location TBA

Biography

Eric Olson, PhD, received his BA and PhD from Wake Forest University. After postdoctoral training at Washington University in St. Louis, he joined the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center as an assistant professor in 1984. In 1995, Olson founded the Department of Molecular Biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, where he is a professor and chair.

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