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 2024 Lang Lecture will take place on Monday, April 29.
The 2023 Fred Lang Memorial Lecturer is Dr. Margaret McFall-Ngai. 
Dr. Margaret McFall-Ngai is a senior staff scientist at Carnegie Institution for Science, a Faculty Associate at California Institute of Technology, and holds emerita professorships at University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her laboratory studies two areas: 1) the role of beneficial bacteria in health using the squid-vibrio model; and, 2) the biochemical and molecular ‘design’ of tissues that interact with light. In addition, she has been heavily involved in promoting microbiology as the cornerstone of the field of biology. She was a Moore Scholar at California Institute of Technology (2011-2013), a Guggenheim Fellow (2010), and an AD White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (2010-2016) and is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology (2002), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2011), the National Academy of Sciences (2014) and is an HHMI Professor (2018- ).
Previous Lecturers include:
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)