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Chancellor of the NUI, Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Maurice Manning presents Professor John O’Keefe with a UCC Honorary Doctorate, UCC cork City.
Nobel Prize winner Professor John O’Keefe will stop off in Ireland on 15 December as he returns from the 2014 Nobel Week (6-12 December) in Stockholm, where he will receive an honorary doctorate from University College Cork (UCC) and deliver a lecture at a major neuroscience symposium.
Picture Clare Keogh
Extended Caption
UCC Honorary Doctorate for Nobel Prize winner Professor John O’Keefe
Nobel Prize winner Professor John O’Keefe will stop off in Ireland on 15 December as he returns from the 2014 Nobel Week (6-12 December) in Stockholm, where he will receive an honorary doctorate from University College Cork (UCC) and deliver a lecture at a major neuroscience symposium.
Professor John O’Keefe, who is based out of University College London, was recently jointly awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Norwegian neuroscientists May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser, for discovering an ‘inner GPS’ that helps the brain to navigate. UCC is in turn recognising Professor O’Keefe’s ground-breaking contributions to neuroscience with an Honorary Doctor of Science (DSc) degree on Monday 15 December.
Professor O’Keefe is the third recipient of an honorary doctorate from UCC who is also a Nobel Laureate; the other recipients being DNA pioneer Dr James Watson in 2010 and Dr Robert Wilson in 2004.
Professor O’Keefe, whose father hailed from Newmarket (Scarteen Lower), Co. Cork, and whose mother from Co. Mayo (Breaffy) in Ireland, will deliver the main lecture at a UCC symposium that also features a number of other renowned Irish neuroscientists. ‘The Hippocampus in Health & Disease’ is organised by Science Foundation Ireland-funded Investigators Dr Yvonne Nolan and Professor John F. Cryan of UCC’s Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience.
“The symposium will highlight how recent discoveries informs us on how the hippocampus is critical for learning and memory, which has implications for Alzheimer’s disease, aging, epilepsy and stress-related psychiatric disorders”, says Professor Cryan, who is also Professor O’Keefe’s introducer at the Honorary Conferring. Professor O’Keefe will deliver a lecture entitled ‘The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map: an update’ which will focus on his seminal contributions to cognitive neuroscience.
The Honorary Conferring ceremony will be live-steamed via
http://www.ucc.ie/en/live/
UCC's annual Honorary Conferring ceremony recognises individuals who have distinguished themselves nationally or internationally, through their scholarship, creativity, public service or contribution to social, cultural, academic, scientific, sporting or economic life.
For further information on the symposium, which takes place in UCC’s Western Gateway Building, including the full schedule, please see
http://www.ucc.ie/en/hippocampus/
Dr Yvonne Nolan comments: “We would like to acknowledge Science Foundation Ireland who support our current Investigator Award for research on the hippocampus. The importance of this research area is exemplified by the award of the Nobel committee to Professor O’Keefe, who we are honoured to have here in Cork.”
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