Cutter Lectures & Symposia

Since 1912, the Cutter Lecture on Preventive Medicine has been one of the most respected institutionalized lectures in the fields of preventive medicine and Epidemiology. The Cutter lectures are administered by the Department of Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health under the terms of the bequest from John Clarence Cutter, MD a graduate of the Harvard Medical School. In his will Dr. Cutter specified that the lectures should concern preventive medicine, should be delivered in Boston and should be free to the medical profession and the press.

The changing character of public health interests is reflected in the history of the Cutter lectures, but all have remained dedicated to enhancing the physical and social welfare of the world’s population.

The lecturers themselves have come from a variety of countries and fields of interest. While the majority of lecturers have been either American or British, many of the other European countries are represented, as well as the continents of Asia and Africa. Lecturers have been some of the most distinguished public health scientists, researchers and professionals, including the founders of modern epidemiology and Nobel Prize recipients.

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Persons with disabilities who would like to request accommodations or have questions about physical access may contact cliebent@hsph.harvard.edu in advance of the program or visit.

The Harvard Chan School hosts a diverse array of speakers, invited to share both scholarly research and personal perspectives. They do not speak for the School, and hosting them does not imply endorsement of their views, organizations, or employers.

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The 176th Cutter Lecture on Preventive Medicine

Friday, December 6, 2024

4:00 – 5:00PM

The Science of Cause and Effect, or From Deep-Learning to Deep Understanding and Personalized Decision-Making

Speaker:
Judea Pearl, PhD
Chancellor’s Professor of Computer Science and Statistics
University of California, Los Angeles

Discussant:
James Robins, MD
Mitchell L Robin LaFoley Dong Professor
of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Location: 
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
677 Huntington Avenue,  Boston, MA 02115
Snyder Auditorium (Kresge G1)

5:00-7:00pm Reception, Kresge Cafeteria

Open to the public

Watch Recording

Abstract:

This talk will define a coherent framework for designing machines that exhibit “Deep Understanding,” that is, a capacity to answer questions of three types: predictions, interventions and counterfactuals.

Pearl will describe a computational model that facilitates reasoning at these three levels, and demonstrate how features normally associated with “understanding” follow from this model. These include generating explanations, generalizing across domains, integrating data from several sources, assigning credit and blame, recovering from missing data, and more. Pearl will conclude by outlining future research directions, including the challenge of Large Language Models and personalized decision-making.

Biosketch:

Judea Pearl is Chancellor’s professor of computer science and statistics at UCLA, where he directs the Cognitive Systems Laboratory and conducts research in artificial intelligence, human cognition, and philosophy of science. He has authored three fundamental books, Heuristics (1983), Probabilistic Reasoning (1988) and Causality (2000, 2009) which won of the London School of Economics Lakatos Award in 2002.

More recently, he co-authored Causal Inference in Statistics (2016, with M. Glymour and N. Jewell) and “The Book of Why” (2018, with Dana Mackenzie) which brings causal analysis to a general audience. Pearl is a member of the National Academy of Sciences the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, the Royal Statistical Society and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. In 2012, he won the Technion’s Harvey Prize and the ACM Alan Turing Award “for fundamental contribution to artificial intelligence through the development of a a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning.”

In 2022 he won the BBVA Frontiers of Knowledge Award for “laying the foundations of modern artificial intelligence, so computer systems can process uncertainty and relate causes to effects.”

This hybrid event offers livestream and in-person viewing options (with limited in-person seating). Seats in the main auditorium is first come, first served. There is additional seating in the overflow room. There will also be a recording of the event for those who cannot attend.

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Cutter Lectures on Preventive Medicine

Friday, May 3, 2024

2:00 – 4:00PM

Diet and Disease: Cause or Confounding?
The 8th Symposium

Speakers:

“Quantifying Regression Dilution and Residual Confounding”

Richard Peto, FRS
Emeritus Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology
University of Oxford, UK

“The Limits of Confounding, the Boundlessness of Measurement Error”

Donna Spiegelman, ScD
Susan Dwight Bliss Professor of Biostatistics
Director, Center for Methods Implementation and Prevention Science Yale University School of Public Health

“Diet and Disease: Remember Bradford Hill”

Walter Willett, MD, DrPH
Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition
Department of Nutrition
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

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List of Past Cutter Events

Cutter Lectures 1912 – 2024

1912 William H. Park, John F. Anderson 1913 George C. Whipple, Mark W. Richardson 1914 Charles V. Chapin, Cressy L. Wilbur 1915 Joseph Goldberger, Victor C. Vaughan 1916 George W. McCoy, Simon Flexner 1917 Martin H. Fischer, Ludwig Hektoen 1918 Elmer V. McCollum 1919 Harry E. Mock, Alice Hamilton, T.M Legge 1920 Theobald Smith, Jules Bordet 1921 Alonzo Taylor, Clemens von Pirquet 1922 Charles Wardell Stiles, Alfred F. Hess 1923 Bella Schick, Arnold Theiler 1924 Thorvald Madsen 1925 Watson S. Rankin 1926 George E. Vincent, Arthur Newsholme, F. Neufeld 1928 Wade Hampton Frost, C. Levaditi 1929 Charles E. A. Winslow, Edwin O. Jordan 1930 Lafayette B. Mendel, William Mansfield Clark, M. Weinberg 1931 Karl F. Meyer 1932 Leslie T. Webster, Charles Armstrong 1933 Louise I. Dublin, Eugene L. Opie 1934 Karl Landsteiner, Anthony J. Lanza, Charles Sidney Burwell 1935 Milton J. Rosenau 1937 Thorvald Madsen 1938 Andrija Stampar 1939 Frederick F. Russell 1940 Ludwig Hektoen, James B. Murphy 1941 Hendrik Dam, Ernest W. Goodpasture 1942 Wilson Jameson 1943 Lowell T. Coggeshall, Alfredo Sordelli 1944 Anatol A. Smorodintzev 1945 Alexander Fleming, Donald Hunter 1946 Lionel Whitby 1947 Thomas M. Rivers, Haven Emerson 1948 William N. Pickles 1949 James C. Spence 1950 Douglas H. K. Lee 1951 Hugh M. Sinclair, Dugald Baird 1953 A. Bradford Hill, Gordan Covell 1954 Thomas Parran 1955 James V. Neel 1957 Charles M. Fletcher 1958 Macfarlance Burnet 1959 Harold F. Dorn 1960 Benjamin Pasamanick,Thomas McKeown 1961 Archibald L. Cochrane 1962 Alexander D. Langmuir 1963 Paul M. Densen 1964 Robert E. Shank 1965 Einar Pederson 1966 Jerome Lejeune 1967 Richard Doll 1969 Donald D. Reid 1970 Kung-pei Chen 1971 C. Ronald Lowe 1972 E. S. Anderson, Richard Doll 1974 H. R. Neveanlinna 1975 E. George Knox 1976 Patricia Jacobs 1977 Peter Medawar 1979 Gilbert Beebe 1982 Dimitrios Trichopoulos 1986 Peter Smith 1991 Hans-Olov Adami 1993 Olli Sakari Miettinen 1994 Lorenzo Tomatis 1996 Philip Cole 1997 David Schottenfeld, Lee N. Robins 1998 Timothy D. Noakes 2000 George Davey Smith, Eric S. Lander 2001 Alexander Walker, Joseph F. Fraumeni, Jr. 2002 Jonathan Samet, Jeffrey P. Koplan 2003 Malcom C. Pike, Jeffrey Sachs 2004 Nicolas Wald, R. Palmer Beasley 2005 Richard Peto, Leslie Bernstein 2006 Nancy Mueller, K. Srinath Reddy 2007 Harvey Fineberg, George Klein 2008 Chien-Jen Chen 2009 Ming Tsuang, Harald Zur Hausen 2010 Norman Breslow 2011 Nubia Munoz, Mark McClellan 2012 Margaret Spitz, Alice Whittemore 2013 Moyses Szklo, Bruce Psaty 2014 Robert N. Hoover, Kenneth J. Rothman 2015 Valerie Beral 2016 Duncan C. Thomas, Walter C. Willett 2017 David Cox, Jeffrey M. Drazen 2018 Margaret A. Hamburg, David J. Hunter 2019 Michael G. Marmot, James M. Robins 2020 Elisabete Weiderpass 2021 Sherman A. James, Anthony S. Fauci 2022 Karl Lauterbach 2023 Rochelle Walensky.

Cutter Symposia 2013 – 2024

2013 1st Cutter Symposium: Celebrating 100 Years of Epidemiology at the Harvard School of Public Health. Alfredo Morabia, Dimitrios Trichopoulos, Nancy Mueller 2015 2nd Cutter Symposium: Dimitrios Trichopoulos Memorial. Pagona Lagiou, David Hunter, Kenneth Rothman 2017 3rd Cutter Symposium on Clinical Epidemiology. Katrina Armstrong, JoAnne E. Manson, Alexander M. Walker, E. Francis Cook 2019 4th Cutter Symposium: Epidemiology, Etiology, and Big Data. Andrew Beam, Caroline Buckee, Tianxi Cai, Alkes Price 2021 5th Cutter Symposium: Epidemiology and Racism. David R. Williams, Will Dobbie, Nancy Krieger 2022 6th Cutter Symposium: Epidemiology and Causal Inference. George Davey Smith, Maria Glymour, Miguel Hernan 2023 The 7th Symposium: Longevity: The Role of Epidemics. Elizabeth Arias, Jean-Marie Robine, Howard Koh 2024 Diet and Disease: Cause or Confounding? The 8th Symposium. Richard Peto, Donna Spiegelman, Walter Willett.