University of Pittsburgh epidemiology professor Ronald LaPorte plans to transform a traditional lecture this Thursday at the Graduate School of Public Health into what could be the largest in history.

And he's using the Internet to do it.

He and other organizers are producing a live Web cast of a 4 p.m. Thursday lecture in Parran Hall by Dr. Eric Noji, chief of the Epidemiology, Surveillance and Emergency Response Branch at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"[This will] break away the walls of the auditorium so not only 300 people can see him, but potentially thousands, even a million," he said.

Noji is presenting this year's John C. Cutler Global Health Lecture. Titled "Public Health Consequences of Disasters: Challenges for Public Health Action," it will be accessible to educators, students, researchers and others interested in disasters to about 150 countries.

The Web cast will be available free through networks operated by such groups as the United Nations and 150 colleges and universities.

You can see it live at cidde-msl.cidde.pitt.edu/mediasite/viewer.

"This promises to be the academic lecture seen by more people in history," LaPorte said. "[With] this approach we can get the best teacher, presentation, the best lecture, to the best and most students in the world."

The idea of sharing academic lectures with the world came seven years ago. LaPorte was upset both by the destruction left after disasters and by the "scholarly information" television anchors dished out to the public.

So he created the supercourse lecture, a scholarly health lecture made available free on his Web site at www.pitt.edu/~super1/.

More than 2,300 Power Point lectures can be downloaded from the site. The topics range from diabetes to natural disasters to the health status of Nepal.

Now he's taking it a step further by presenting Noji's lecture live on the Web.

LaPorte admits he won't know for sure how many will watch, but he said it surely will be in the thousands and could reach a million. Already, a Power Point version of the Noji's lecture, which shows the text of the lecture on a slide-show, has been downloaded by 30,000 people, he said.

Dr. Bernard Goldstein, dean of the public health school, said using technology to transmit information helps keep public health issues from being silenced.

"As an educator, we do so much work to prepare one really good lecture for a small group of people," he said. "Why shouldn't we be able to make sure that lecture has an impact beyond the immediate audience?"