A Wayne State University School of Medicine faculty member will lecture and chair a session during the prestigious HIV DART & Emerging Viruses Conference 2016, to be held Dec. 7-9 in Los Cabos, Mexico.

Ladislau Kovari, Ph.D., professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, will present "Global Burden and Novel Treatment for Noroviruses" during the Emerging Viruses session of the conference, which takes place every two years. This year's conference theme is "Frontiers in Drug Development and Antiviral Therapies."

Dr. Kovari also will chair the New Drugs and NeuroAIDS session of the conference, marking its 20th anniversary this year.

HIV DART and Emerging Viruses is a premier international gathering of leading scientists and physicians from academia, industry, government and nonprofit organizations. The conference is designed to assemble clinicians, translational researchers and basic scientists to advance knowledge of the ongoing drug development processes for HIV and emerging viruses.

Dr. Kovari's lab examines the molecular mechanisms of HIV-1 resistance to Food and Drug Administration-approved inhibitors. He specializes in the structural and biological analysis of proteins using structure-function studies to investigate pharmacological drug targets against HIV-1 and Hepatitis C viruses.