About the Speakers

Professor Jules A Hoffmann was born in 1941 in Luxembourg. He is a professor at the University of Strasbourg, France. He received his PhD from the University of Strasbourg in 1969.  He was Director of the CNRS Research Unit 9022 “Immune Response and Development in Insects” from 1978 to 2005 and Director of the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology of CNRS in Strasbourg from 1993 to 2005.  He was President of the French National Academy of Sciences (2007 – 2008).  He is a member of several Academies including the French National Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, Academia Europaea, the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Russian Academy of Sciences. 

Professor Ruslan M Medzhitov was born in 1966 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He is currently the David W Wallace Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, USA. He received his undergraduate education at Tashkent State University and obtained his PhD from Moscow State University in 1993.  He was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University School of Medicine from 1994 to 1999, where he became assistant professor in 1999 and full professor in 2003.  He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Professor Bruce A Beutler was born in 1957 in Chicago, USA. He is currently Raymond and Ellen Willie Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research in Honor of Laverne and Raymond Willie, Sr., and Director, Center for Genetics of Host Defense, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, USA. He received his BA from the University of California, San Diego, in 1976 and his MD from University of Chicago in 1981. Between 1983 and 1985 he was a postdoctoral fellow at Rockefeller University, where he became assistant professor in 1985. In 1990 and 1996, he was appointed associate professor and professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. In 2000, he became a professor at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, USA, and in 2007, was appointed Chairman of the Department of Genetics at the same institution. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.