Dr. Bruce Beutler is Professor and Director of the Center for the Genetics of Host Defense at UT Southwestern. In 2011, he shared one-half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Jules A. Hoffman for their discovery of receptor proteins that recognize disease-causing agents and activate innate immunity. Dr. Beutler originally joined the UT Southwestern faculty in 1986 as a member of the Internal Medicine faculty and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator. He began his Nobel-winning research in 1993, and it came to fruition in 1998. He moved to the Scripps Research Institute in 2000 and then returned to UT Southwestern in 2011. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago in 1981. Dr. Beutler was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and to the National Academy of Medicine in 2008. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2013. Dr. Beutler holds the Raymond and Ellen Willie Distinguished Chair in Cancer Research, in Honor of Laverne and Raymond Willie, Sr. (Note: A third scientist, Ralph M. Steinman, received the other half of the 2011 Nobel Prize for his discovery of the dendritic cell and its role in adaptive immunity.)