The BU Marine Program Faculty started this lecture series in honor of Fred Lang, an invertebrate physiologist. Fred Lang’s work followed themes of cardiac and neuromuscular physiology, blended uniquely with developmental neurobiology in lobsters. Teaching was always an important activity for Fred, and even after obtaining a Career Development Award, he continued it enthusiastically. He was a key figure in the Boston University Marine Program at Woods Hole and his legacy is carried on through this annual lecture.
The 2025 Lang Lecture will take place on Thursday, April 10.
The 2025 Fred Lang Memorial Lecturer is Barbara Block.
Dr. Barbara A. Block holds the Charles and Elizabeth Prothro Professorship at Stanford University in both the Department of Oceans and the Department of Biology. Her research is focused on how large pelagic fish utilize the open ocean spanning from genomics to biologging. She and her team have pioneered the successful development and deployment of electronic tags on tunas, billfishes and sharks. The combination of lab and field research has led to a rapid increase in the understanding of movement ecology, population structure, physiology, evolution and behaviors of pelagic fish and sharks. Dr. Block was Chief Scientist for the Tagging of Pacific Predators program (TOPP), organized under the Census of Marine Life. This international program, succeeded in placing 4000 electronic tags on 23 predators in the North Pacific to understand how pelagic animals use the North Pacific ecosystem. Block began her oceanographic career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution with Dr. Francis Carey. She earned a Ph.D. in 1986 at Duke University working with Professor Knut Schmidt Nielsen. She was an assistant professor at the University of Chicago and joined the Stanford faculty in 1994. Block has published 250 peer reviewed papers and has received the NSF Young Investigator Award, a MacArthur Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship for Marine conservation, the Rolex Award for Enterprise, and a Benchely Award for Ocean Science. Block founded Tag-A-Giant (TAG) a non-profit fund at The Ocean Foundation to elevate the science and conservation initiatives for bluefin tunas globally. Block was elected to the National Academy in 2023 and inducted into the International Game Fishing Association (IGFA) Hall of Fame in 2021. Block has helped produce 5 films with Discovery, Disney and Nat Geo. The most recent award winning film is Blue Serengeti, the story of the white sharks of Monterey Bay.
Previous Lecturers include:
Dr. Margaret McFall-Ngai, Carnegie Institution for Science
Dr. Gretchen Hofmann, UC Santa Barbara
Dr. Heidi Sosik, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Dr. Rocky Geyer, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Dr. Nancy Knowlton, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Dr. Steve Palumbi, Stanford University, Hopkins Marine Station
Dr. Carl Safina, Stony Brook University and the Safina Center
Dr. Bernd Budelman, University of Texas, Biomedical Research Institute of Galveston
Dr. Irene Pepperberg, University of Arizona, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Charles Stevens, Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, California)
Dr. Nicholas Strausfield, University of Arizona, Department of Entomology, Neurobiology, Anatomy, Ecology, and Evolutionary Biology
Dr. Even Marder, Brandeis University, Department of Biology (Modulation of Neural Networks)