Norman Heatley Lecture: This annual lecture is held in honour of Norman Heatley, who was a pivotal member of the team that developed penicillin in the early 1940s.

Helen H. Hobbs, M.D., is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a Professor of Internal Medicine and Molecular Genetics at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Stanford University prior to attending Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. After completing an internship in internal medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, she moved to Dallas, Texas where she finished her clinical training and served as chief resident in internal medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Drs. Michael Brown and Joseph Goldstein before joining the faculty of UT Southwestern in 1987. She is Director of the McDermott Center for Human Growth and Development, which serves as the Center for Human Genetics at UT Southwestern. She is also Director of the Dallas Heart Study, a longitudinal, multiethnic, population-based study of Dallas County. Her work focuses on defining the genetic determinants of plasma lipid levels and cardiovascular risk. Most recently, she has identified genetic variations that confer susceptibility to fatty liver disease.