The Hopwood Lecture
Professor Sir David Hopwood, FRS has been at the John Innes since 1968.
After graduating from Cambridge he did his PhD there and later became an Assistant Lecturer, spending two sabbatical periods in Italy before becoming a Lecturer in Genetics at Glasgow University in 1961, where he stayed until he took up the appointment as John Innes Professor of Genetics at the University of East Anglia and Head of Genetics at John Innes.
Presently, he is a John Innes Emeritus Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Genetics at the University of East Anglia and remains in close contact with colleagues and friends on a daily basis.
Previous Hopwood Lecture speakers
2024 – Professor Christine Jacobs-Wagner, Stanford University – ‘From the unusual cell biology of Borrelia to Lyme disease’
2023 – Professor Sharon Peacock, University of Cambridge – ‘A celebration of microbial sequencing and its benefits for human health‘
2017 – Professor Julian Parkhill, Infection Genomics, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute – ‘Dating bacterial evolution: understanding the emergence and spread of human pathogens’
2015 – Professor Michael Fischbach, Department of Bioengineering & Therapeutic Sciences, UCSF – ‘Small molecules from the human microbiota’
2014 – Professor Susan Golden, Division of Biological Sciences, UC San Diego – ‘The Itty-Bitty Time Machine: how cyanobacteria tell time’
2013 – Professor Bonnie Bassler, Princeton University – ‘Manipulating quorum sensing to control bacterial pathogenicity’
2012 – Dr Gerry Wright, Department of Biochemistry & Biomedical Sciences, McMaster University, Canada – ‘Resistance guided antibiotic discovery’
2011 – Nancy Moran, Yale University – ‘Evolution and genomics of beneficial symbionts in insects’
2009 – Ed DeLong, Massachusetts Institute of Technology – ‘Natural microbial world as viewed through the lens of genomics and transcriptomics’
2007 – Dr Thomas Silhavy, Princeton University – ‘Outer membrane biogenesis in Gram-negative bacteria’
2006 – Carol Gross
2005 – Susan Gottesman
2003 – Lucy Shapiro
2002 – Karl Stetter
2001 – Ira Herskowitz
Speaker portraits and prints
Speakers at the Hopwood Lecture are presented with a print of a work of art by the late Leonie Woolhouse, a local artist and wife of the former Director Harold Woolhouse, which illustrates the life and career of Professor Sir David Hopwood.
During their visit to the John Innes Centre, speakers of the named lectures are given the opportunity to have their portrait done by Professor Enrico Coen.