UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Christa Lese Martin, associate chief scientific officer and founding director of the Autism & Developmental Medicine Institute at Geisinger, will be the speaker at the 2019 Jean Vallance Lecture in Nursing Innovation on Friday, March 29. The lecture will start at 4:30 p.m. in Ruth Pike Auditorium, 22 Biobehavioral Health Building on the University Park campus.
Martin’s talk, “Implementing Precision Health Genomics for All Patients at Geisinger,” will focus on her work using a “genetics first” approach to developing precision health-driven treatments for neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorders such as autism. Her research also focuses on evidence-based approaches to understanding genomic variation.
Martin is board certified in clinical cytogenetics by the American Board of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ABMGG). She is a principal investigator for the NIH-funded Clinical Genome Resource (ClinGen) and a co-chair of the American College of Medical Genetics and Genomics (ACMG) Secondary Findings Working Group. At Geisinger, she is part of the leadership team for MyCode, a groundbreaking precision health initiative that incorporates genomic medicine into everyday health care. Martin received a bachelor of science degree in biology from Penn State and holds a doctorate in human genetics from the University of Pittsburgh.
The Jean Vallance Lecture in Nursing Innovation is an endowed lecture series presented by Penn State’s College of Nursing to honor Jean S. Vallance, a 30-year resident of State College who passed away in 1997. Vallance helped organize the Family Planning Clinic, later known as Family Health Services, to bring low-cost health care to women in central Pennsylvania. She was among the first nurses in Pennsylvania to be registered as a certified registered nurse practitioner (CRNP). Her husband, Theodore Vallance, was a former associate dean in the College of Health and Human Development and avid supporter of the College of Nursing.
For more information, visit www.nursing.psu.edu/vallance.