The NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture Series, colloquially known as WALS, is the highest-profile lecture program at the NIH. Lectures are held on most Wednesdays from September through June from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET in Lipsett Amphitheater, Building 10, on the NIH Bethesda campus.
NOTICE: All WALS lectures are available to watch live at the time of event via https://videocast.nih.gov. Link there, look for the link to the WALS talk among all the offerings on any given day, and click forward to watch.
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Differentiating Trust Behaviors from Trustworthiness Beliefs for Better Science Communication
John C. Besley, Ph.D.
Michigan State University
Wednesday, September 30, 2026 at 2 p.m. ET
You can't directly communicate trust. But you can communicate in ways that demonstrate trustworthiness. This talk will share what social science knows about how communication choices can shape specific trustworthiness perceptions and how these perceptions may affect people's willingness to trust health-related decision-makers.
A Cure for Hepatitis C: Now What?
Charles M. Rice, Ph.D.
The Rockefeller University
Wednesday, October 7, 2026 at 2 p.m. ET
Rolla E. Dyer Lecture
Dr. Rice plans to present a personal history of his career studying animal viruses. From a surprise landing in a virology lab, to studying model enveloped arboviruses, Sindbis virus and yellow fever virus, and the dawn of molecular biology, which ushered in the ability to develop reverse genetic systems for probing virus biology and engineering viruses for new applications. In parallel, there was growing recognition of a new hepatitis virus affecting transfused patients.
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