Looking for some variety for your undergraduate or graduate toxicology course as we switch to an online distance-learning format for the remainder of the semester? The Eminent Toxicologist Lecture Series includes 15 one-hour lectures and is freely available to students throughout the world, including nonmembers. These lectures can be streamed over the internet asynchronously. If you prefer, you can synchronously stream the videos while having a group chat, enabling real-time conversations about the lecture. Most of the lectures include learning objectives, recommended prerequisite topics, and study questions to help you include the topic in your course.
The lectures cover a wide range of topics, some of which are typically included in toxicology courses, and others that include more advanced topics that are specialized subdisciplines of toxicology. A good starting lecture may be Dr. Michael Gallo’s “From Murder to Mechanisms: 7000 Years of Toxicology’s Evolution.” Dr. Gallo discusses major historical events and their relationship to toxicology, with a focus on the 20th-century events that led to the formation of the Society of Toxicology. Dr. John Doull’s lecture, “How Toxicology Became an Academic Discipline,” works well with this lecture, providing more historical context on how the discipline of toxicology became formalized.
If you’re looking for more advanced lectures typical of guest lectures late in the semester, you might consider Dr. Cheryl Lyn Walker’s lecture, entitled “Environmental Epigenomics: The Developmental Origins of Health and Human Disease.” Dr. Walker discusses how epigenetic programming influences health and disease, particularly the effects of toxicant exposures during vulnerable windows of time during development. Dr. Kenneth Ramos’s lecture, “Reprogramming of the Human Genome by Toxic Injury,” also discusses the role of epigenetics in cancer and complements the developmental aspects of Dr. Walker’s lecture.
A variety of other lectures are available, discussing animal models, adaptation to chemical exposures, and organ-specific toxicology. These lectures can provide virtual guest lectures for your course as you adapt to online teaching for the remainder of the semester. For the complete list of lectures, visit the “Undergraduate Educators” web page of the SOT website.
