In May of 1988, Frances Willison Bishop, Ph.D, established the "Dr. Clayton Willison and Emma Elizabeth Willison Fund" in memory of her parents, as a trust with the University of Michigan. The purpose of the fund is to "benefit the Department of Microbiology and Immunology for research in the cause, prevention, and control of disease and for honorariums for one guest lecture each year in the field of microbiology and immunology, which lectures shall be known as the Willison Lectureship."
Dr. Bishop was born in 1898, and received her B.A. degree from the University of Michigan, School of Literature, Science, and the Arts in 1921. She received her Ph.D degree from the University of Michigan Department of Microbiology in 1942. The title of her dissertation was "The Effect Produced In Vitro by Vitamin C on the Toxic and Antigenic Properties of Diphtheria Toxin". Dr. Bishop taught for 16 years at the University of Oklahoma. She passed away at the age of 95 in July of 1993.
Willison Lectures
1995-1996
James E. Darnell, Jr.
Rockefeller University
1996-1997
Jonathan Beckwith
Harvard University
1997-1998
Timothy A. Springer
Harvard Medical School
1998-1999
Hidde Ploegh
Harvard Medical School
1999-2000
Charles A. Janeway, Jr.
Yale University Medical School
2000-2001
R. John Collier
Harvard Medical School
2001-2002
Ralph M. Steinman
Rockefeller University
2002-2003
Pamela J. Bjorkman
California Institute of Technology
2003-2004
Daniel A. Portnoy
University of California, Berkeley
2004-2005
Martin Gellert
National Institutes of Health
2005-2006
Bonnie Bassler
Princeton University
2006-2007
Laurie Glimcher
Harvard University
2007-2008
Carl Nathan
Weill Medical College
2008-2009
Ron Germain
National Institute of Allergy and Infectous Diseases, NIH
2009-2010
Rulsan Medzhitov
Yale University
2010-2011
Jorge E. Galan, Ph.D
Yale University
2011-2012
Mark J. Shlomchik, Ph.D
Yale University
2012-2013
John Boothroyd, Ph.D
Stanford School of Medicine
2014-2015
Jenny Ting, Ph.D
University of North Carolina School of Medicine
2015-2016
Jeffrey Weiser, Ph.D.
New York University-Langone Medical Center
2016-2017
Diane Mathis, Ph.D.
Harvard Medical School
2017-2018
Ajit Varki. Ph.D.
University of California-San Diego
2018-2019
Yasmine Belkaid, Ph.D.
NIH - NIAID
2021-2022
Kate A. Fitzgerald, Ph.D.
University of Massachusetts Medical School
2022-2023
Raif Geha, MD
Harvard University
2023-2024
Steven Holland, MD
NIAID/National Institutes of Health
