ABOUT
THE MORHAIM LECTURE SERIES
Maryland State Delegate
Dan Morhaim, M.D., for whom the lecture series is named, is a physician
and legislator who is a leader in environmental preservation and restoration.
He often compares his work as a physician – healing the human
body – to the challenge of working proactively to heal and sustain
the health of the environment.
“The environment
is of obvious importance for sustaining all forms of life on this planet,
including our own”, Morhaim said. “There are things to be
done locally, regionally, and globally to preserve the environment,
but they all come down to the choices and actions of individuals –
along with the help and support of public institutions.”
“Obviously,
the role of life sciences is critical – both to understanding
the impact of environmental problems and how to relieve them, but also
how to restore the damage that has already been done to the environment.
The work done at UMBI, ranging from basic research revealing critical
migration corridors of the Chesapeake blue crab, to applied biotechnology
such as fully self-contained aquaculture – from microbes that
can remove PCBs in the Baltimore Harbor to replacement of malaria-bearing
mosquitoes with strains that are harmless – from ethnobotanical
studies for new natural products and medicines to microalgae as alternative
sources of energy – these are all examples of the new and critical
ways that environmentally sound science is already leading toward a
bright future.
“We
not only want to slow the rush to the precipice, we also want to show
the way to turn around and go the other direction; to heal and restore
the environment, so that it is more than sustained for generations to
come”.