Program

Tentative 2021 MARS Speakers

Barry Green
The John B. Pierce Laboratory and Department of Surgery, Yale School of Medicine  

Dr. Green received his PhD from Indiana University in 1975 where he studied the sense of touch. Postdoctoral positions with Joe Stevens and Larry Marks at the John B. Pierce Laboratory and Frank Geldard at Princeton University afforded training in the new psychophysics of S.S. Stevens and opportunities to study somatosensory interactions that led to the discovery of a basic mechanism of haptic object perception (“thermal referral”). Dr. Green moved to the Monell Chemical Senses Center in 1983 where he established a research program on oral somesthesis. His work at Monell on multisensory interactions among temperature, taste, and chemical irritation led to the concept of “chemesthesis” and the development of the Labeled Magnitude Scale of sensation intensity. Dr. Green returned to The John B. Pierce Laboratory and Yale School of Medicine in 1996 where he continued his studies of taste and chemesthesis, which included discovery of the phenomenon of Thermal Taste. In 2009, Dr. Green became the Director of the Pierce Laboratory and served in that capacity through 2016. His current research continues to focus on mechanisms of human taste and flavor perception, including the contributions of chemesthesis and retronasal olfaction to the flavor and appeal of electronic cigarettes.



Theresa Marteau
 University of Cambridge
Professor Theresa Marteau is Director of the Behaviour and Health Research Unit in the Clinical School at the University of Cambridge, and Director of Studies in Psychological and Behavioural Sciences at Christ’s College, Cambridge. She studied psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and the University of Oxford (Wolfson College).

Her research interests include:
  • i. development and evaluation of interventions to change behaviour (principally diet, tobacco and alcohol consumption) to improve population health and reduce health inequalities, with a particular focus on targeting non-conscious processes
  • ii. risk perception and communication, particular of biomarker-derived risks, and their weak links with behaviour change
  • iii. acceptability to publics and policy makers of government intervention to change behavior.

Current research in her group is funded by Wellcome Trust, Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Academy of Social Sciences. In 2017, she was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in recognition of her contribution to Public Health.

Margaret Morris
 UNSW Sydney, Australia
Margaret Morris, Professor and Head of Pharmacology at UNSW Sydney, has a PhD in Medicine (Monash) and postdoctoral training in neuroscience. Morris leads the Environmental determinants of obesity research group within the School of Medical Sciences, where she investigates the impact of adverse early life events and lifestyle factors on chronic disease risk. Her research focuses on the intergenerational transmission of obesity through both maternal and paternal lines and the psychology of eating, e.g. how does provision of a varied, energy rich diet override the regulatory control mechanisms that should maintain body weight? Her lab investigates the impact of a palatable, western diet, and the contributions of sugar and fat, to cognitive decline and the relationship with changes in composition of the gut microbiota. The ultimate goal is to harness better understanding of the gut-brain axis to develop new approaches to CNS disorders.

Richard Palmiter
 University of Washington

Dr. Palmiter is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor of Biochemistry and Genome Sciences at the University of Washington. He received a B.A. from Duke University and Ph.D. degree from Stanford University. Prior to moving to the University of Washington in 1974, he was a post-doctoral fellow at Stanford, at G.D. Searle Research Laboratories, and Harvard. Dr. Palmiter is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Association of Arts and Sciences. His laboratory is best known for its contributions to molecular genetics, development of mouse transgenic technologies and their use to study neural circuits that affect mouse behavior.