DATE: 5 p.m. Jan. 20, 2009.

EVENT: Dr. Tadataka (Tachi) Yamada, president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Global Health Program, will address “Perspectives on Global Health” as part of the William Davidson Institute’s Global Speaker Series. His talk is free to the public.

Yamada oversees grants totaling more than $7 billion in programs directed at applying technologies to address major health challenges of the developing world, including TB, HIV, malaria and other infectious diseases, malnutrition, and maternal and child health.

A scientist and scholar in gastroenterology, Yamada is the author of more than 150 original manuscripts on the subject and is the editor of “The Textbook of Gastroenterology.” The studies undertaken by Yamada and his collaborators have led to basic discoveries in the post-translational processing and biological activation of peptide hormones, structure and function of receptors for hormones regulating gastric acid secretion, and regulation of genes involved in the acid secretory process.

Yamada obtained his medical degree from New York University and later became an investigator in the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, trained in gastroenterology at the UCLA School of Medicine and assumed his first faculty position there. He then moved to the University of Michigan where he ultimately became chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine and physician-in-chief of the University of Michigan Medical Center before joining GlaxoSmithKline as chairman of research and development and a member of its board of directors.

PLACE: Blau Auditorium, Ross School of Business, 701 Tappan St.

SPONSORS: William Davidson Institute and Ross School of Business.