David Botstein, an internationally acclaimed geneticist and chair of Stanford University's genetics department, will present a public lecture on "The Genome, Biotechnology and Cancer," Thursday, Nov. 2, at the Buehler Alumni and Visitors Center of the University of California, Davis. His talk will be the second of eight events in the "Biotechnology, Policy, and Society Lecture Series," held on selected Thursday evenings until early March. The series is sponsored by the campus's Center for History, Society, and Culture in an effort to present a broad range of thought on biotechnology and its social implications. Botstein's research is in the area of mapping genes for complex diseases and developing technology that will make the mapping process easier. His research is focused on three diverse programs: the cell biology of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisia, the genetics of common human diseases, and the organization and storage of biological information that has flooded the research community due to recent advances in genome sequencing. In his research on human cancer, Botstein and colleagues are using an automated process known as "microarray hybridization" to better understand patterns of gene expression characteristic of various types of tumors. Botstein holds a doctoral degree in human genetics. Before joining the Stanford faculty, he served 20 years as a genetics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then as a vice president at the biotechnology firm Genentech.