KINGSVILLE (March 30, 2006) — The 26th annual Fred M. Garland Memorial Lecture will be held at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 4, in room 100 of the Biology Earth Sciences building at Texas A&M University-Kingsville.

Dr. David H. Russell, chemistry professor at Texas A&M University, will be this year’s guest speaker. Russell also is director of The Laboratory for Biological Mass Spectrometry, MDS-Sciex Professor of Mass Spectrometry and co-director for the Center for Structural Biology.

His lecture, Proteomics: The Driving Force for Developmental Mass Spectrometry, will discuss new technology that allows chemists to analyze molecules in more precise and quicker ways.

Russell earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from the University of Arkansas-Little Rock and his doctorate in chemistry from the University of Nebraska.

He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, and received the Foreign Travel Award and Two-Year Extension for Creativity, both from the National Science Foundation.

Russell is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Society of Mass Spectrometry, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Council of Principle Investigators.

He is a member of the Center for Structural Biology, the Center for Advanced Biomolecular Research, the Life Sciences Task Force and the University Research Infrastructure Oversight Committee. Russell is chair-elect of the Council of Principle Investigators and is currently developing curriculum for a course on biological mass spectrometry for an NIH grant.

The first Garland Lecture was held in 1981 to honor Dr. Fred M. Garland, who chaired the chemistry department at A&M-Kingsville from 1950 to 1975. Garland received the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation Award for distinguished teaching on the college level in 1977. In that same year, the Fred M. Garland Endowment Fund was created from the donations of former students and colleagues.

It was thanks to Garland’s persistence and leadership that the chemistry department first received certification from the American Chemical Society. That certification remains today.

The Garland Lecture is free and open to the public. For more information, call 361-593-2914.