2025 Evening Lectures launch with “The Barbell Prescription” co-author Dr. Jonathon Sullivan

Strength-building and aging, psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, and future of robotics and exoskeletons are all up for discussion in the Fall 2025 Evening Lecture series at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC).

Dr. Jonathon Sullivan launches the Fall season on Sept. 18 with a talk titled “Athletic Training, Transhumanism, and Telos.” The talk begins at 6 p.m., the reception precedes it at 5:30 p.m. in the community room at 40 S. Alcaniz St. in downtown Pensacola.  Reserve your free tickets today.

Sullivan is a retired physician and neuroscientist known for his work in strength training in older people. He is the co-author of “The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training For Life After Forty” and is the owner and director of the Greysteel Clinic in Farmington, Mich., where he has trained older adults since 2014. He works with Barbell Logic, a professional strength and nutrition coaching company, and he is the host and producer of the Greysteel channel on YouTube.

Sullivan describes strength training as a “critical form of exercise medicine for healthy aging.” His talk will explore a general consideration of training programs, and how athletes and coaches develop fitness attributes by exploiting a biological stress-recovery-adaptation process. This cycle has structural similarities with other physical, developmental, and evolutionary processes. These observations, Sullivan says compel an expansion of the concept of the athlete beyond biology alone. He says the athletic paradigms of training and practice will become more important, not less, in a transhuman future.

Other lectures include:

Oct. 7: Dr. Thom Mayer is medical director for the NFL Players Association and is a leader in emergency medicine, sports medicine, and leadership in times of crisis. His expertise has been instrumental in advancing the understanding of concussion management and emergency care in sports. He has served the U.S. Department of Defense Science Board Task Forces on Bioterrorism, Homeland Security, and consequences of Weapons of Mass Destruction. He also is a successful entrepreneur and author.

Nov. 13: Dr. Charles Serhan is a Harvard professor best known for his discovery of specialized pro-resolving mediators. SPMs are molecules that can activate the natural resolution of inflammation and help people avoid anti-inflammatory drugs. The discovery of SPMs changed our understanding of inflammation and human disease. He is the Simon Gelman Professor of Anesthesia at Harvard Medical School and the director of the Center for Experimental Therapeutics and Reperfusion Injury at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dec. 4: Dr. Zach Graham is an IHMC Research Scientist and a Health Science Research Specialist at the Birmingham VA Health Care System. His research interests are focused on how exercise can be implemented to improve the health and quality of life of individuals across disease states and lifespan. Spinal cord injury, Parkinson’s disease and aging are a few of his research areas of interest.

Since 2001, IHMC has welcomed the public to learn from renowned speakers in science, technology, civic development, economic development and more. These free, monthly Evening Lectures draw audiences of 200 people or more and are accessible in our online library.

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.