Tomorrow: Nobel Laureate Venki Ramakrishnan opens the 30th Ulam Lecture Series with a look inside the ribosome — the molecular machine that makes life possible. Ramakrishnan will provide a history of molecular visualization, and discuss how his team determined the atomic structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit (work for which he was awarded a Nobel prize in chemistry) and how this work has helped explain how ribosomes read genetic code. He will also introduce recent developments in cryoEM, a technique used to visualize biological molecules at near-atomic resolution. Free tickets: or watch the live stream on SFI’s YouTube