A free public lecture titled "Vaccines in the 21st Century" will be given on Feb. 5 by Vivek Kapur, professor of microbiology and infectious diseases and head of the Department of Veterinary and Biomedical Sciences at Penn State. The event is the third of six lectures in the 2011 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science, a free minicourse for the general public with the theme "Epidemic: Infectious Disease on a Changing Planet." No registration is required. The lectures take place on consecutive Saturday mornings from 11 a.m. to about 12:30 p.m. in 100 Thomas Building on Penn State's University Park campus.

Kapur's lecture will reveal the reasons why effective vaccines still are lacking today for many important infectious diseases that cause untold human suffering and billions of dollars in economic loss. He will describe the opportunities and challenges in current research, as well as the new approaches that scientists are taking to develop effective vaccines against the infectious diseases of the 21st century.

A free public lecture titled "Just When You Thought You Were Safe . . . New Emerging Diseases Appear" by Peter Hudson will be given at 11 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 22, in 100 Thomas Building on the Penn State University Park campus. Hudson is Willaman professor of biology and director of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State. The event is the first of six lectures in the 2011 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science, a free minicourse for the general public with the theme "Epidemic: Infectious Disease on a Changing Planet." No registration is required. All the lectures take place from 11 a.m. to about 12:30 p.m. on six consecutive Saturday mornings in 100 Thomas Building.

A free public lecture titled "The Global Water Crisis" will be given by Gregory Knight, professor of geography at Penn State, from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Feb. 13, in room 100 of the Thomas Building on Penn State's University Park campus. The event is the fourth of six lectures in the 2010 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science, a free minicourse for the general public with the theme "Water: The Next Frontier." No registration is required. The lectures take place on six consecutive Saturdays More information can be found at http://www.science.psu.edu/alert/frontiers online.

A free public lecture titled "Water: The Molecule That Shapes Our World" will be given from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on Jan. 30, in room 100 of the Thomas Building on Penn State's University Park campus by Karl Mueller, professor of chemistry at Penn State. The event is the second of six lectures in the 2010 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science, a free mini course for the general public with the theme "Water: The Next Frontier." No registration is required.

A free public lecture titled "Not Science Fiction: Using Microbes to Make Electricity and Clean Water" will be given on Jan. 23, at Penn State's University Park campus by Bruce Logan, the Kappe professor of environmental engineering at Penn State. The event is the first of six lectures in the 2010 Penn State Lectures on the Frontiers of Science series, a free minicourse for the general public with the theme "Water: The Next Frontier." No registration is required. The lectures take place on six consecutive Saturday mornings from 11 a.m. to about 12:30 p.m. in room 100 of the Thomas Building.