Sam Hopkins:  

Life I live in North Raleigh near Falls Lake. I've worked in Research Triangle Park ever since coming to this area in 1984. . I have three children. They are Rachel, Will and Claire. Rachel graduated from McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College) in 2018, Will is a senior at Gettysburg College, and Claire is a combat medic in the US Army. Over the years I have continued to run. I was on the track team at Western Maryland College (which changed its name to McDaniel College over 20 years ago) and ran all of the events that I did in high school. I have continued to run ever since and have competed in triathlons for the past 30 years. Workplace After SHHS, I graduated from Western Maryland College in 1980 with a BA degree in Biology. I received an A.D. Williams pre-doctoral fellowship from the state of Virginia which allowed me to pursue my graduate education. In 1984 I received a PhD in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University. From that point I accepted a post doctoral fellowship with the Wellcome Research Laboratories in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and have been here in North Carolina ever since. I have worked almost exclusively on infectious diseases throughout my research career and focused on HIV and hepatitis C drug discovery and development. In 1993 I started a biotechnology company, Trimeris Inc, that focused on creating novel therapeutics to treat individuals who are infected with HIV. Eventually I became the global head of development for a collaboration between Trimeris and Hoffmann LaRoche. In 2003 the collaboration led to the worldwide approval of Fuzeon (a drug my research team discovered at Trimeris) for the treatment of HIV infec...Expand for more