The Hamilton Symposium will feature a panel discussion highlighting this year's theme: Rare Diseases: From Mechanism, to Molecules, to Market. Conversations will address the barriers and challenges for those with rare genetic disease and the impact on families. The Department of Biology will sponsor this event on May 2nd, 2025.

Panelists will offer perspectives on the broad range of factors that influence societal behavior, education, therapeutic approaches and advancement, humanities and research and development which affect an estimated 300 million people with rare disorders. This year's panelists are Wade A. Brown '99 (Head, Strategic Research Operations and Global Research Strategy & Operations at Takeda), Michael Collins M.D., Ph.D. (Retired Physician-Scientist, Senior Investigator, National Institutes of Health NIDCR), and Dean Hashimoto M.D., J.D. (Professor, John C. Ford S.J. Distinguished Scholar, Boston College Law School). 

Named in honor of Annie Hamilton and the CUREFA Foundation, the Symposium’s purpose is to promote research, advocacy, and treatment of people living with rare disorders. The event will precede the 2024 Student Research Day in Higgins Hall.

Schedule of events are as follows:

• 12:30 PM Hamilton Symposium Panel Discussion, Higgins Hall Room 300
• 1:45 PM Undergraduate Research Poster Session Begins (Posters A Present)
• 2:45 PM Rotate Poster Presenters (Posters B Present)
• 3:45 PM Concluding Remarks and Recognition of the Thesis Writers and Announcement of the 2025 Balkema Senior Thesis Award, Higgins Hall Atrium