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INFORMATION FOR

Immunology Track

Immunology Track Leadership

Faculty

  • Marcus Bosenberg, MD, PhD

    Anthony N. Brady Professor of Dermatology, Pathology and Immunobiology; Director, Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer; Director, Yale Center for Immuno-Oncology; Co-Leader, Cancer Immunology, Yale Cancer Center

    Marcus Bosenberg MD, PhD, is a physician scientist who directs a leading melanoma research laboratory, is Co-Leader of the Cancer Immunology Program of Yale Cancer Center, Director of the Yale Center for Immuno-Oncology, Contact PI of the Yale SPORE in Skin Cancer,  Director of the Center for Precision Cancer Modeling, and is a practicing dermatopathologist at Yale Dermatopathology through Yale Medicine.In his research, Dr. Bosenberg studies factors that regulate anti-cancer immune responses. His laboratory has developed several widely utilized mouse models in order to study how melanoma forms and progresses, to test new cancer therapies, and how the immune system can be stimulated to fight cancer. He works to translate basic scientific findings into improvements in cancer diagnosis and therapy. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles and is a member of the Yale Cancer Center Executive Committee.Dr. Bosenberg mentors undergraduate, graduate, medical, and MD-PhD students in his laboratory, teaches at Yale School of Medicine, and trains resident physicians, fellows, and postdoctoral fellows.
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  • David A. Braun, MD, PhD

    Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology), Louis Goodman and Alfred Gilman Yale Scholar

    David Braun, MD, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and a member of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology (CMCO) at Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Braun cares for patients with kidney cancers. He received his PhD in Computational Biology from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Science at New York University and his medical degree from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. He completed his residency at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he received the Dunn Medical Intern Award and served as Chief Medical Resident before completing fellowship training in adult oncology through the Dana-Farber/Partners CancerCare program where he was appointed the Emil Frei Fellow and the John R. Svenson Fellow. Dr. Braun joined Yale from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where he was an Instructor in Medicine with clinical and scientific interest in understanding and improving immune therapies for kidney cancer. He has a longstanding interest in integrating experimental and computational approaches to biomedical research and is currently studying mechanisms of response and resistance to immune therapy in kidney cancer, with the goal of developing novel therapies. He continues this work as part of the CMCO, which fosters and mentors physician-scientists as they advance their laboratory-based research programs to bridge fundamental cancer biology with clinical investigation for the translation of basic discoveries into better treatments or diagnosis.
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  • Grace Chen, PhD

    Assistant Professor

    Grace Chen received her undergraduate training in the College of Chemistry at UC Berkeley. She attended Harvard University for her PhD where she worked in David Liu's laboratory to discover and characterize novel RNA modifications. Her postdoctoral research was at Stanford University in Howard Chang's group, where she investigated circular RNA immunity. Grace joined Yale University as a faculty in the Department of Immunobiology in 2019. Her research focuses on the functions and regulations of circular RNAs and RNA modifications in health and disease.
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  • Lieping Chen, MD, PhD

    United Technologies Corporation Professor in Cancer Research and Professor of Immunobiology, of Dermatology and of Medicine (Medical Oncology)

    Dr. Lieping Chen is an immunologist interested in basic T cell biology, cancer immunology, and translational research to develop new treatments for human diseases including cancer. Prior to joining Yale, he was a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and Mayo Clinic, and a scientist in Bristol-Myers Squibb Pharmaceutical Research Institute.Dr. Chen has published over 370 peer-reviewed research articles. His work in the discovery of the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway for cancer immunotherapy was cited as the #1 breakthrough of the year by Science magazine in 2013. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for Cancer Research and the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer.
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  • Sidi Chen, PhD

    Associate Professor of Genetics

    Sidi Chen joined the Yale Faculty in 2015 in the Department of Genetics, Systems Biology Institute, and Yale Cancer Center. His research focuses on providing a global understanding of biological systems and development of novel breakthrough therapeutics. Chen developed and applied genome editing and high-throughput screening technologies, precision CRISPR-based in vivo models of cancer, global mapping of functional drivers of cancer oncogenesis and metastasis. He is leading a research group to seek global understandings of the molecular and cellular factors controlling disease progression and immunity. His group continuously invents versatile systems that enable rapid identification of novel targets and development of new modalities of cancer immunotherapy, cell therapy and gene therapy. His goal is to uncover novel insights in cancer and various other immunological diseases and develop next generation therapeutics.  Dr. Chen received a number of national and international awards including the Pershing Square Sohn Prize, DoD Era of Hope Scholar, NIH Director’s New Innovator Award,  Blavatnik Innovator Award, Yale Cancer Center Basic Science Research Prize, AACR NextGen Award for Transformative Cancer Research, Ludwig Foundation Award, Damon Runyon Cancer Research Fellow, Dale Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists, TMKF Innovative/Translation Cancer Research Award, BCA Exceptional Research Grant Award, MRA Young Investigator Award, V Scholar, Bohmfalk Scholar, Ludwig Family Foundation Award, St. Baldrick’s Foundation Award, CRI Clinic & Laboratory Integration Program (CLIP), MIT Technology Review Top 35 Innovators (Regional), and Sontag Foundation Distinguished Scientist Award.
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  • Joseph Craft, MD

    Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine (Rheumatology) and Professor of Immunobiology; Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine, Internal Medicine: Rheumatology; Program Director, Investigative Medicine, Internal Medicine: Rheumatology

    Dr. Joe Craft, Paul B. Beeson Professor of Medicine and Professor of Immunobiology at Yale, is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. He did postgraduate training in internal medicine, rheumatology and immunology at Yale, and directs a laboratory devoted to understanding of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, lupus) and host responses to viral pathogens. Dr. Craft is a two-time NIH MERIT Awardee, recipient of the Yale Bohmfalk Basic Science Teaching Prize, and an elected Fellow of American Association for Advancement of Science. He directs the Yale Investigative Medicine MD to PhD Program and is Director of the Colton Center for Autoimmunity at Yale. Dr. Craft is chair of the Board of Lupus Therapeutics of the Lupus Research Alliance (LRA), past chair of the Board of Scientific Counselors at NIAMS and of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Alliance for Lupus Research (now LRA). He chaired the Immunological Sciences (now Hypersensitivity, Autoimmune and Immune-mediated Diseases) Study Section of NIH and is a former Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences and a Kirkland Scholar. He is co-founder of L2Diagnostics, a company in New Haven, CT, formed in partnership with Yale University and devoted to discovery of new diagnostics and therapeutic targets for immunological and infectious diseases, and is currently a member of its Board of Directors.
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  • Charles Dela Cruz, MD, PhD

    Associate Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine) and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Director, Center for Pulmonary Infection Research and Treatment (CPIRT)

    Dr. Dela Cruz completed his research training through an MD/PhD program in the area of immunology and virology from University of Toronto and Yale. Clinically, he is trained in internal medicine, and specializes in pulmonary and critical care medicine and is currently an Associate Professor at Yale University in the same department. He is also the founding director for the Center for Pulmonary Infection Research and Treatment (CPIRT). www.cpirt.yale.edu. His laboratory is interested in studying the role of respiratory infection in the pathogenesis of acute and chronic lung diseases. Specifically, his work focuses on how lung infection contribute to inflammation, injury and tissue repair in the lung. This has allowed the lab to carefully study the molecular and cellular responses of several novel mediators in the lung.His laboratory focuses on two main research programs. (1) Studying novel immune regulators in the lung during respiratory infections. (2) Studying the effects of cigarette smoke (CS) exposure in the pathogenesis of airway and lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) using preclinical genetic mouse models and human biosamples. The goal of the lab is also to be able to confirm and translate the findings using biospecimens from the established and establishing cohort of human patients with various lung diseases.COPD is a composite entity that includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, is a leading cause of death in the world, and is a disease that is in need of new treatments. One of the goal of our laboratory is to investigate the interaction between CS and respiratory virus infection in the pathogenesis of COPD and identify novel therapeutic targets for this respiratory disease. It has been long thought that the frequent respiratory infections in COPD patients are due to their depressed immune function. Our studies have revealed that CS-exposed hosts have an over-exaggerated immune reaction to viral infections. Frequent acute COPD exacerbations correlate with increased rate of disease progression and more loss of lung function in COPD especially if it is due to viral infections. Our studies have shown that CS exposure has an impressive ability to regulate the innate immunity in the lung after influenza virus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. CS enhances the inflammation, alveolar destruction and airway fibrosis caused by influenza virus and RSV. These effects are mediated by type I interferon and RIG-like helicase antiviral innate immune pathway. CS exposure also results in the induction of interleukin-15 in the setting of these respiratory infections. We hypothesize that these novel mechanistic pathways may explain the heightened inflammatory response and worsening lung functions in COPD patients with multiple virally-induced exacerbations, and the chronic lung inflammation seen in stable COPD patients. We have also translated our findings by studying these immune mediators in patients infected with various respiratory viruses and have thus far collected >300 human biosamples.YCCI Scholar 2011
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  • Vishwa Deep Dixit, DVM, PhD

    Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Pathology and Professor of Immunobiology; Director, Yale Center for Research on Aging (Y-Age), Pathology

    Son of teachers, Deep grew up in Hisar (Northwest India). He studied Veterinary Medicine in India, did PhD Research in University of Hannover Germany and postdoc research in Morehouse School of Medicine and NIH. He currently holds Waldemar Von Zedtwitz endowed chair and is a Professor in the Departments of Pathology, Comparative Medicine and Immunobiology and is the director of Yale Center for Research on Aging. Dixit lab studies Immunometabolism and aging. His team help establish NLRP3 inflammasome in causing ‘inflammaging’ and immunosenescence that leads to age-related chronic diseases including metabolic dysfunction. Dixit and his collaborators have identified that switch from glycolysis to ketogenesis deactivates the inflammasome and reduces immunopathology.  The ongoing work in his laboratory is aimed at understanding how adaptation to negative energy balance in a host can be harnessed to identify immunometabolic checkpoints to enhance health and lifespan.
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  • Stephanie Eisenbarth, MD, PhD

    Associate Professor Adjunct

    Dr. Eisenbarth’s laboratory focuses on how dendritic cells, B cells and T cells interact to induce tailored adaptive immune responses. The work spans how this triad is operational in the spleen to transfused red blood cells (RBCs), in the lung to aeroallergens, and in the gut to food allergens, utilizing both mouse models and human samples. https://eisenbarthlab.com/
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  • Erol Fikrig, MD

    Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Professor of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases) and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Affiliated Faculty, Yale Institute for Global Health; Section Chief, Infectious Diseases, Internal Medicine

    My laboratory investigates vector-borne diseases. Studies are directed toward understanding Lyme disease, flaviviral infections including dengue and West Nile viruses, and malaria. Efforts on Lyme disease include exploring immunity to Borrelia burgdorferi, selective B. burgdorferi gene expression in vivo, and the immunobiology of Lyme arthritis. Flaviviruses and Plasmodium are used as models  to understand the molecular interactions between pathogens, their arthropod vectors and their mammalian hosts. Finally, we are developing new  approaches to prevent ticks and mosquitoes from feeding on a vertebrate host, thereby interfering with pathogen transmission.
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  • Richard Flavell, PhD, FRS

    Sterling Professor of Immunobiology; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

    Dr. Flavell is Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale University School of Medicine, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received his B.Sc. (Honors) in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1970 in biochemistry from the University of Hull, England, and performed postdoctoral work in Amsterdam (1970-72) with Piet Borst and in Zurich (1972-73) with Charles Weissmann. Before accepting his current position in 1988, Dr. Flavell was first Assistant Professor (equivalent) at the University of Amsterdam (1974-79); then Head of the Laboratory of Gene Structure and Expression at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London (1979-82); and subsequently President and Chief Scientific Officer of Biogen Research Corporation, Cambridge, Massachusetts (1982-88). Dr. Flavell is a fellow of the Royal Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as the National Academy of Medicine. Richard Flavell uses transgenic and gene-targeted mice to study Innate and Adaptive immunity, T cell tolerance and activation in immunity and autoimmunity,apoptosis, and regulation of T cell differentiation.
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  • Ellen F Foxman, MD, PhD

    Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunobiology

    Dr. Ellen Foxman, M.D., PhD. is an Associate Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Her laboratory studies antiviral defense in the human respiratory tract, focusing on innate immunity, an inborn system of protective mechanisms that guards against harmful viruses or bacteria, even when the body has never encountered the infection before. The overarching goal of this research is to improve the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of illnesses caused by respiratory viruses. Background. Dr. Foxman trained in medicine and immunology at Stanford University. She became interested in respiratory viruses during her residency training in clinical pathology at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, due to the advances in testing that were beginning to reveal a previously unappreciated very high prevalence of these viruses. She later joined Dr. Akiko Iwasaki’s group at Yale as a postdoctoral associate, where she demonstrated suppression of innate immune responses in the airway epithelium by cool ambient temperature. In 2016, she established her independent research group at Yale. Contributions of the Foxman Lab include defining biomarkers to track innate immune responses in the human respiratory tract and uncovering evidence for viral interference, in which general antiviral defenses triggered by common cold viruses protect against unrelated viruses such as influenza and COVID-19.  Dr. Foxman’s recognitions include the 2018 Hartwell Foundation Individual Biomedical Research Award, the 2021 ASCI Young Physician-Scientist Award, and the 2021 Rita Allen Foundation Scholars Award.
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  • Andrew Goodman, PhD

    C.N.H. Long Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Director of Microbial Sciences Institute; Interim Chair, Microbial Pathogenesis

    Andrew L. Goodman, PhD, is the C. N. H. Long Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale University School of Medicine and Director of the Yale Microbial Sciences Institute. Goodman received his undergraduate degree in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University, his PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Harvard University, and completed postdoctoral training at Washington University. His lab uses microbial genetics, gnotobiotics, and mass spectrometry to understand how gut microbes interact with their host during health and disease. The lab is also interested in how the microbiome impacts the efficacy and toxicity of medical drugs. The lab’s contributions have been recognized by the NIH Director New Innovator Award, the Pew Foundation, the Dupont Young Professors Award, the Burroughs Wellcome Foundation, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholars Program, the ASPET John J. Abel Award, and the Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering.
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  • David A. Hafler, MD, FANA

    William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor of Neurology and Professor of Immunobiology; Chair, Neurology; Neurologist-in-Chief, Yale New Haven Hospital

    Dr. Hafler is the William S. and Lois Stiles Edgerly Professor and Chairman Department of Neurology, Yale School of Medicine and is the Neurologist-in-Chief of the Yale-New Haven Hospital. He graduated magna cum laude in 1974 from Emory University with combined B.S. and M.Sc. degrees in biochemistry, and the University of Miami School of Medicine in 1978. He then completed his internship in internal medicine at Johns Hopkins followed by a neurology residency at Cornell Medical Center-New York Hospital in New York. Dr. Hafler received training in immunology at the Rockefeller University then at Harvard where he joined the faculty in 1984. He was one of the Executive Directors of the Program in Immunology at Harvard Medical School and was on the faculty of the Harvard-MIT Health Science and Technology program where he was actively involved in the training of graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. Hafler, in many respects, is credited with identifying the central mechanisms underlying the likely cause of MS. His early seminal work demonstrated that the disease began in the blood, not the brain, which eventually led to the development of Tysabri to treat the disease by blocking the movement of immune cells from the blood to the brain. He was the first to identify myelin-reactive T cells in the disease, published in Nature, showing that indeed, MS was an autoimmune disorder. He then went on to show why autoreactive T cells were dysregulated by the first identification of regulatory T cells in humans followed by demonstration of their dysfunctional state in MS. As a founding, Broad Institute associate member, Hafler identified the genes that cause MS, published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Nature. More recently, he identified the key transcription factors and signaling pathways associated with MS genes as potential treatment targets. Finally, he recently discovered that salt drives induction of these pathogenic myelin reactive T cells, both works published in Nature. Hafler was the Breakstone Professor of Neuroscience at Harvard, and became Chairman of Neurology at Yale in 2009, where he has built an outstanding clinical and research program that strongly integrates medical sciences. Hafler is among the most highly cited living neurologists and has received numerous honors including the Dystel Prize from the AAN for his MS research, the Raymond Adams Award from the ANA, and was the recipient of the NIH Javits Investigator Award, and The Dale McFarlin Prize by the International Society of Neuroimmunology. He is a member of AOA, the American Society of Clinical Investigation, and was elected into the National Academy of Medicine.
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  • Kevan Herold, MD

    C.N.H. Long Professor of Immunobiology and of Medicine (Endocrinology)

    My background and research are in translational immunology. I am interested in understanding the basis for autoimmune diseases and developing new therapies based on our understanding of disease mechanisms. My focus has largely been in the field of autoimmune Type 1 diabetes. The work encompasses basic laboratory work as well as clinical studies to understanding the regulation of autoreactive T cells to clinical trials that involve novel therapeutics. As part of these studies my lab has been very interested in analysis of beta cell function in Type 1 diabetes and identifying the cellular mechanisms that can protect them from immune killing. We have also been studying the development of autoimmune diabetes in patients with cancers who are treated with checkpoint inhibitors. Our clinical and basic studies are focused on understanding how beta cells are destroyed and react to inflammation. Finally, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been studying the immunologic basis for responses in children and adults who are hospitalized with COVID-19 to understand the mechanisms that can lead to disease protection.
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  • Andres Hidalgo, PhD

    Professor

    I am interested on the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which innate immune cells, and their hematopoietic precursors, contribute to organismal physiology and pathology. As a postdoctoral trainee I developed and used live imaging modalities to study acute inflammatory disease and discovered the receptors that mediate early neutrophil recruitment, and the signals that cause acute vascular injury. As an independent researcher at CNIC (Spain), my laboratory further developed tools to study of thrombo-inflammation and the dramatic consequences in several organs, including the lung, brain and heart. We discovered new functions for innate immune cells, and demonstrated that circadian rhythms in the bone marrow are entrained in part by neutrophils entering this organ, and that these rhythms are critical for immune defense and inflammation. I am also interested in other type of innate immune cells, such as resident macrophages of the heart. As a Professor at Yale, I am interested in defining the fundamental organization and function of innate immune cells, from their development and specification under homeostasis, to their reparative or disease-promoting roles.
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  • Ya-Chi Ho, MD, PhD

    Associate Professor Term; Director of Graduate Studies, Microbiology PhD Program of Biological and Biomedical Sciences

    Dr. Ho's research program focuses on understanding HIV-1 persistence and HIV-1-induced immune dysfunction using single-genome and single-cell approaches on clinical samples. She received MD in 2002 (Phi Tau Phi) and completed internal medicine residency and infectious disease fellowship training in Taiwan in 2007. She practiced as an infectious disease attending physician for one year (2007-2008). She received PhD at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (Phi Beta Kappa, HHMI International Student Research Fellowship, and Johns Hopkins Young Investigator Award) in 2013, mentored by Dr. Robert F. Siliciano. During PhD, she developed the first HIV-1 full-length single-genome sequencing method that became the standard measurement of the size of the HIV-1 latent reservoir (Cell 2013). As a postdoc, she profiled HIV-1 DNA and RNA landscape and identified the impact of cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) and defective HIV-1 proviruses on HIV-1 persistence (Cell Host Microbe 2017, Best Paper of the Year, corresponding author). After she started my lab at Yale University in September 2017, she developed single-cell HIV-1 SortSeq and identified HIV-1-driven aberrant cancer gene expression at the integration site as a mechanism of HIV-1 persistence (Science Translational Medicine 2020).She developed CRISPR-ready HIV-1-infected cell-line models and a dual-reporter drug screen to identify drugs that can suppress HIV-1-induced cancer gene expression (JCI 2020). She is currently working on understanding HIV-1-induced immune dysfunction and clonal expansion dynamics of HIV-1-infected cells using single-cell multi-omic ECCITEseq on clinical samples (Immunity 2022). She found that HIV-1 preferentially persist in cytotoxic CD4+ T cells. She also found that antigen stimulation and tumor necrosis factor (TNF) as key drivers for the clonal expansion of HIV-1-infected cells. This is the first time identifying single-cell transcriptional landscape of HIV-1 RNA+ cells at their in vivo state without ex vivo stimulations. In addition, she used a genomewide CRISPR screen and identified HIV-1 silencing factors including SAFB family proteins and RNA nuclear exosome complex (J Virol 2022). Dr. Ho's research support mainly comes from NIH, with an R21 funded 1 year after PhD graduation and two R01-level grants funded within one year after she started her lab at Yale University. She is focusing on using single-cell genomic approaches to understand HIV-1 persistence. She is an Investigator for basic science and translational collaboration projects, such as NIH Structural Biology Center CHEETAH, NIH Martin Delaney Collaboratory BEAT HIV and REACH, a UM1, and a P01.
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  • Akiko Iwasaki, PhD

    Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Dermatology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and of Epidemiology (Microbial Diseases); Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

    Akiko Iwasaki, Ph.D., is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in Canada and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health. Her research focuses on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at the mucosal surfaces, and the development of mucosal vaccine strategies. She is the co-Lead Investigator of the Yale COVID-19 Recovery Study, which aims to determine the changes in the immune response of people with long COVID after vaccination. Dr. Iwasaki also leads multiple other studies to interrogate the pathobiology of long COVID, both in patients, and through developing animal models of long COVID. Dr. Iwasaki was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, to the National Academy of Medicine in 2019, to the European Molecular Biology Organization in 2021, and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.
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  • Daniel Jane-Wit, MD/PhD

    Associate Professor of Medicine (Cardiology) and Immunobiology

    I am a physician-scientist in the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine. My research laboratory studies the role of endothelial cells, the cells that line blood vessels, in solid organ transplant rejection. In this endeavor, we have developed novel, patient-centered protocols heavily incorporating human biospecimens to increase the likelihood that findings derived from these assays will be clinically relevant.
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  • Nikhil Joshi, PhD

    Associate Professor

    The Joshi laboratory uses intricate tumor models and advanced approaches to investigate immune cell interactions with developing tumors. The goal is to determine mechanistically why these interactions do not lead to more potent anti-tumor responses and to identify entry points for modulating these interactions through genetic manipulation and therapeutic intervention. Our studies focus on using established complex mouse models to investigate how subtypes of T cells function in the tumor microenvironment and how their interactions with other immune cell types impacts tumor development. Our laboratory combines advanced genetic modeling of mice and immunologic techniques to address fundamental questions in tumor immunology.
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  • Paula Kavathas, PhD

    Professor of Laboratory Medicine, of Immunobiology and of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology; Vice Chair for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Laboratory Medicine; Vice Chair of Diversity, Immunobiology; Institutional Leader, CIRTL Network

    Dr. Kavathas studies the T cell co-receptor CD8ab and the  functional significance of four isoforms of the human CD8b protein that exist in humans and great apes but not mice. More recently she is studying the basis for acquired resistance to immunotherapy of human lung cancer tumors.Dr. Kavathas is currently Vice Chair of Diversity for both the Departments of Immunobiology and of Laboratory Medicine.  She is on the board of Status of Women in Medicine, SWIM, and of the Women’s Faculty Forum, WFF,  (Chair from 2013-2017). She played a role in diversifying portraits at Yale including commissioning a portrait of the first women PhDs located in the nave of Sterling library.  Other activities include  co-organizing a conference entitled “Gender Rules,” publication of The View (a demographic analysis of women and URMs at Yale), expansion of the Phyllis Bodel Childcare Center, and changes in parental leave policies.
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  • Steven Kleinstein, PhD

    Anthony N Brady Professor of Pathology; Co-Director of Graduate Studies, Computational Biology and Bioinformatics

    Dr. Steven Kleinstein is a computational immunologist with a combination of big data analysis and immunology domain expertise. His research interests include both developing new computational methods and applying these methods to study human immune responses. Dr. Kleinstein received a B.A.S. in Computer Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University. He is currently Professor of Pathology (with a secondary appointment in Immunobiology) at the Yale School of Medicine, and a member of the Interdepartmental Program in Computational Biology and Bioinformatics (CBB), and the Human and Translational Immunology Program. Specific areas of research focus include:High-throughput single-cell B cell receptor (BCR) repertoire profiling (AIRR-seq, Rep-seq, scRNA-seq+VDJ)Multi-omic immune signatures of human infection and vaccination responses
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  • Liza Konnikova, MD/PhD

    Assistant Professor

    Dr. Konnikova's team focuses on the development of immunity at barrier sites such as the GI tract and the maternal-fetal interface and its role in the pathogenesis of diverse diseases such as sepsis, preterm labor, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), very early onset (VEO) and pediatric IBD. The Konnikova lab is further interested in how the microbiome and the associated metabolome regulate immune development and homeostasis at barrier sites.
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  • Priti Kumar, PhD

    Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases and of Microbial Pathogenesis; Director of Graduate Admissions, The BBS Microbiology Track; Director, Yale Predoctoral Training Program in Virology, Virology Laboratories; Chartered Member, Study Section: NIH: NIAID- AIDS Discovery And Development Of Therapeutics, National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

    Dr. Priti Kumar received her PhD in Immunology from Indian Institute of Science in the year 2002. After completing her postdoctoral studies from Harvard Medical School, she joined as an Assistant Professor at Yale University in the year 2008. Currently, she is Associate Professor of Infectious Diseases at Yale University School of Medicine. Her laboratory conducts translational research with a focus on treatment of diseases caused by RNA viruses. For the last 12 years as faculty at Yale, she made key contributions towards the development and testing of gene therapy and cure based approaches that overcome in vivo biological barriers to enable the use of next-generation biologicals like nucleic acids such as siRNA, nucleases such as recombinases and CRISPRs and antibodies with effector function for their therapeutic potential against viruses like HIV-1, West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis virus, dengue and now, SARS-COV2. Her laboratory is well-recognized for studies on HIV-1 in state-of-the-art humanized mouse models that allow characterization of virus pathogenesis in the context of a human immune system. Her laboratory also conducts pioneering research on live-imaging pathogenesis of infectious viruses in small animal models.
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  • Mark N. Lee, MD, PhD

    Assistant Professor

    Dr. Mark Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine with a secondary affiliation in the Department of Pathology, and is a member of Yale's Human and Translational Immunology (HTI) Program as well as the Cancer Immunology Research Program at Yale Cancer Center. Dr. Lee received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry at Yale University, and his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard Medical School. He performed his Ph.D. work in Immunology at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he studied how common genetic variants alter immune phenotypes. He completed residency in Clinical Pathology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital, followed by a fellowship in Transfusion Medicine in the Harvard Joint Program in Transfusion Medicine, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He served as an Instructor in Pathology at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and as an attending physician on the Blood Transfusion Service in the Department of Pathology at the Massachusetts General Hospital, prior to joining the faculty at Yale School of Medicine as a physician-scientist.
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  • Brett Lindenbach, PhD

    Associate Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and of Comparative Medicine

    Dr. Lindenbach is an expert on the Flaviviridae, a large family of enveloped, positive-strand RNA viruses, including several important human and animal pathogens. Dr. Lindenbach received his B.S. in Biology from the University of Illinois, and his Ph.D. in Immunology from Washington University in St. Louis.  He completed postdoctoral studies with Dr. Paul Ahlquist at the HHMI/University of Wisconsin and with Dr. Charlie Rice at The Rockefeller University, where he developed the first robust cell culture model of hepatitis C virus.  Dr. Lindenbach values an inclus team-building approach to mentorship.
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  • Carrie L Lucas, PhD

    Director of Admissions, Immunology Track

    Associate Professor of Immunobiology

    Dr. Carrie L. Lucas received her PhD from Harvard Medical School and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health, NIAID. Her laboratory discovers single-gene defects underlying severe immune disorders in humans and investigates mechanisms using patient cells and genetically engineered mouse models. A major focus of her work has been on phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) signaling and mechanisms of disease in immunodeficient patients with mutations in PI3K subunits.
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  • John MacMicking, PhD

    Associate Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and of Immunobiology; Member, Yale Systems Biology Institute; Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute

    John MacMicking is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator. He trained in synthetic organic chemistry at the Australian National University (B.Sc, 1st Class Honors) where he conducted thesis work in the Department of Immunology & Cell Biology formerly headed by 1996 Nobel Laureate, Peter Doherty, at the John Curtin School of Medical Research.He then came to the U.S. to pursue Ph.D studies with Carl Nathan in the Immunology program at Cornell University-Sloan-Kettering Institute in New York City before being selected as an HHMI Life Science Research Foundation Fellow at The Rockefeller University to conduct studies with John McKinney. His doctoral dissertation described the first knockout of an innate immune gene in mammals - inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) - genetically engineered between 1992-1995. It served as an early paradigm for cell-autonomous immunity to bacterial, viral and protozoan infections. At Rockefeller University he computationally identified, physically mapped and began functionally characterizing a complete IFN-inducible GTPase superfamily in humans and mice as a new defense network operating against all pathogen classes. For these discoveries he was named a Edward Mallinckrodt Jr Foundation Fellow (2004), Searle Scholar (2005), Cancer Research Institute Investigator (2006), Burroughs-Wellcome Fund Investigator (2008), CCFA Senior Research Awardee (2010), AAF Scholar (2014),  and Kenneth Rainin Foundation Innovator (2014). In 2022, he received the Alumni Award of Distinction (Medical Sciences) from Cornell University.Dr. MacMicking was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010 and tenured in 2014. He was chosen as an HHMI Investigator in 2015 before moving to the Yale Systems Biology Institute in 2017.
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  • Eric Meffre, PhD

    Associate Professor Adjunct

    My work focuses on the etiology of autoimmune diseases affecting millions of individuals in the world by identifying molecules and pathways involved in the establishment of B-cell tolerance through the investigation of rare patients with primary immunodeficiency (PID), enrolled at Yale and through an international network.Patients with PID provide opportunities to study the impact of specific gene defects on the regulation of B-cell tolerance and the removal of developing autoreactive B cells in humans. Using a RT-PCR based strategy that allows us to assess the frequency of autoreactive B cells, we found that alterations in B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling in patients lacking functional BTK or CD19, or mutations in molecules mediating TLR signaling such as TACI, IRAK4, MyD88 as well as in adenosine deaminase (ADA) and activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) all result in a defective central checkpoint and a failure to counterselect developing autoreactive B cells in the bone marrow. Interestingly, successful gene therapy in ADA-deficient patients results in the restoration of early B-cell tolerance checkpoints, revealing that appropriate regiments could correct B-cell selection impairments characteristic of many patients with autoimmune conditions. Our investigations also revealed that central B-cell tolerance defects are primary to many autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, type 1 diabetes and systemic lupus erythematosus and can result from genetic polymorphisms such as the R620W PTPN22 risk allele associated with all these diseases and that was reported to alter BCR signaling important for the regulation of this checkpoint. In contrast, most patients with multiple sclerosis only suffer from specific defects of their peripheral B-cell tolerance checkpoint that likely result from abnormal regulatory T cells, which normally control this second B-cell selection step in the periphery. Regardless of which early B-cell tolerance checkpoint is defective in patients with autoimmune diseases, all these patients are characterized by the accumulation of autoreactive clones in their mature naïve B cell compartment, which may contribute to the development of autoimmunity by increasing the frequency of B cells presenting self-antigens. Understanding the etiology of autoimmunity is the first step toward effective treatment, therapy and ultimately, cure.
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  • Markus Müschen, MD, PhD

    Arthur H. and Isabel Bunker Professor of Medicine (Hematology) and Professor of Immunobiology; Director, Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology; Chief, Cellular and Molecular Oncology

    Dr. Markus Müschen is the Arthur H. and Isabel Bunker Professor of Hematology, HHMI Faculty Scholar and was appointed Director of the Center of Molecular and Cellular Oncology at Yale in October 2020. He obtained his MD degree in Biochemistry with Helmut Sies (summa cum laude) from the Heinrich-Heine-Universität in Düsseldorf, completed his residency in Hematology-Oncology with Volker Diehl and his MD-PhD with Martin Krönke in Immunology at the University of Cologne, Germany. Since 2009, the Müschen laboratory has established new conceptual frameworks for the understanding of B-cell signaling and energy metabolism and how defects in these mechanisms contribute to autoimmunity and B-cell transformation. Influenced by his postdoctoral training in basic immunology (Klaus Rajewsky and Ralf Küppers) and cancer genetics (Janet D. Rowley), Dr. Müschen is particularly interested in signal transduction pathways that change the clinical trajectory of human B-cell malignancies and B-cell driven autoimmune diseases.
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  • Kevin O'Connor, PhD

    Associate Professor of Neurology and of Immunobiology

    Dr. Kevin C. O’Connor is an Associate Professor of Neurology and Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Tufts Medical School. He took his post-doctoral training in Immunology at Harvard Medical School where he also spent several years on the faculty as an Assistant Professor. His investigative interests are in human translational immunology and neurology. He and his group are specifically interested in defining the mechanisms by which B cells, and the antibodies they produce, affect tissue damage in autoimmunity. To this end they are engaged in understanding how particular B cell subsets initiate and sustain autoimmunity. He and his team were among the first to characterize tertiary lymphoid tissue and the adaptive immune response in germ cell tumors and meningiomas. They also described the molecular characteristics of B cells and plasma cells that populate the muscle tissue of patients with myositis. They refined the role of Epstein-Barr virus in the multiple sclerosis (MS) brain and have further defined the role of humoral immunity in children with MS. Recently, he and his team identified a network of B cells and autoantibodies that populate the MS central nervous system. His current research focus includes further defining the immunopathology of myasthenia gravis (MG). He and his team demonstrated that B cell depletion therapy has sustained efficacy in MG. They were the first to show that MG-derived AChR antigen specific T cells belong to the pro-inflammatory Th17 subset. They also determined that MG subjects harbor defects in B cell tolerance checkpoints that correlate with abnormalities in the naïve B cells repertoire. They most recently identified the autoantibody-producing cells in MuSK MG. Their current focus is on further defining the mechanisms of autoantibody production in MG with the aim of improving therapeutic approaches.
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  • Noah Palm, PhD

    Associate Professor of Immunobiology

    Noah W. Palm is an Assistant Professor of Immunobiology at the Yale University School of Medicine. His laboratory focuses on illuminating the myriad interactions between the immune system and the gut microbiota in health and disease. Dr. Palm performed his doctoral work with Ruslan Medzhitov and his postdoctoral work with Richard Flavell, both at Yale University.
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  • Joao Pereira, PhD

    Associate Professor of Immunobiology

    Dr. João P. Pereira is an associate professor of Immunobiology, member of the Yale Cancer Center and of the Yale Stem Cell Center.  He studied Microbiology at Universidade Católica Portuguesa (BSc, 1996), Biotechnology at DeMontfort University (MSc, 1997), and did PhD studies (Universidade do Porto, 2004) in Immunology at the Gulbenkian Institute (Oeiras) and the Pasteur Institute (Paris) mentored by Paulo Vieira. In 2005 Dr. Pereira joined the laboratory of Dr. Jason Cyster (UCSF) as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Postdoctoral fellow.  In the Cyster lab he studied mechanisms of B lymphocyte migration during development in primary lymphoid organs and during activation in secondary lymphoid organs. Dr. Pereira joined the department of Immunobiology at Yale University in 2010.
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  • Jordan Pober, MD, PhD

    Bayer Professor of Translational Medicine and Professor of Immunobiology, Pathology and Dermatology; Director, Human and Translational Immunology Program; Vice-Chair, Dept. of Immunobiology for the Section of Human and Translational Immunology

    Dr. Pober was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1949 and grew up in the New York City metropolitan area. He attended Haverford College, graduating summa cum laude in 1971 with high honors in Biology, Chemistry and History. He was admitted to Yale’s Medical Scientist Training Program, receiving his MD and his PhD in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry with Prof. Lubert Stryer in 1977. He completed his first year of pathology residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1978, was a post-doctoral fellow with Prof. Jack Strominger in the Department of Biochemistry at Harvard University from 1978 through 1980, and completed pathology training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1981. He worked as an attending Pathologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from 1981-1991, serving as an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School during the same period. He returned to Yale Medical School in 1991 as a Professor of Pathology and Immunobiology, and also became a Professor of Dermatology in 1998. Dr. Pober was named the Director of the Molecular Cardiobiology Program at the Boyer Center for Molecular Medicine in 1991 and founded the Vascular Biology and Transplantation (VBT) Program, which succeeded Molecular Cardiobiology, in 1999. In 2007, he stepped down as the director of the VBT program, becoming Professor and Vice-Chair of the Department of Immunobiology for the Section of Human and Translational Immunology. He was named Ensign Professor of Immunobiology in 2011 and Bayer Professor of Translational Medicine in 2012. Dr. Pober has been honored as a Searle Scholar, an Established Investigator of the American Heart Association and a MERIT awardee of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. He received the Warner Lambert-Parke Davis award in 1988 and the Rous Whipple Award in 2011 from the American Society of Investigative Pathology, the Earl Benditt award from the North American Vascular Biology Organization in 2014 and the Basic Science Established Investigator Award from the American Society of Transplantation in 2018. He has served as an Editor of Immunity and Co-Editor-in Chief of Laboratory Investigation, leading immunology and pathology journals, respectively. He also has served as President of the North American Vascular Biology Organization. He is co-founder and co-director of the Joint Yale-Cambridge University Biomedical Research Program, is a visiting fellow in the Dept. of Medicine at the University of Cambridge, and was elected a Fellow Commoner of Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge in 2012. .Dr. Pober’s research involves understanding the functions of blood vessels and vascular cells in human inflammatory and immune responses and, reciprocally, how inflammation and immunity affect vascular health and function. He is particularly interested in how insights from experiments with human cells and tissues and with humanized mice can be used to improve organ replacement therapy, to improve tissue engineering and to regenerate injured tissues.
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  • Craig Roy, PhD

    Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and of Immunobiology and Director of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS); Vice-Chair, Department of Microbial Pathogenesis

    Craig Roy received his B.S. from Michigan State University in 1985 and earned his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology at Stanford University in 1991 in the laboratory of Dr. Stanley Falkow. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Ralph Isberg in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine in 1996, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology at Stony Brook University. Dr. Roy became a founding member of the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale University in 1998 and serves as Vice-Chair. He currently holds the title of Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunobiology. Research in the Roy laboratory focuses on the host-pathogen interface. Using multi-disciplinary approaches his laboratory has discovered many novel mechanisms that intracellular pathogens use to modulate host membrane transport pathways, which allow these pathogens to evade cell autonomous defenses and create novel organelles that permit bacterial replication.
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  • Lauren Hachmann Sansing, MD, MS, FAHA, FANA

    Associate Professor of Neurology; Academic Chief, Division of Stroke and Vascular Neurology, Neurology; Associate Vice-Chair, Faculty Development, Neurology

    Dr. Sansing completed her residency in Neurology in 2006 followed by a Vascular Neurology fellowship from 2006-2008, both at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Her clinical interests include acute ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage as well as other complex neurovascular diseases. Following clinical training, she completed a Master of Science in Translational Research at Penn studying immune mechanisms of injury after intracerebral hemorrhage. She then joined the faculty at the University of Connecticut and Hartford Hospital in 2010, where she was active in the Departments of Neurology, Neuroscience, Neurosurgery, and Immunology. Dr. Sansing came to Yale in the summer of 2014, where she continues her work in cerebrovascular diseases and neuro-inflammation through basic, translational, and clinical studies. She leads a NIH-funded laboratory identifying immunological treatment targets for stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, vascular cognitive impairment and dementia. She has received numerous national and international awards for her research, including the Established Investigator Award from the American Heart Association, the Derek Denny-Brown Neurological Scholar Award from the American Neurological Association, the Michael S. Pessin Stroke Leadership Award from the American Academy of Neurology, and is an elected member of the Henry Kunkel Society and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
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  • David G. Schatz, PhD

    Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Immunobiology and Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Chair, Immunobiology

    Dr. Schatz has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the mechanisms that assemble and diversify antigen receptor genes that encode antibodies and T cell receptors.  He is best known for the discovery of RAG1 and RAG2, subsequent biochemical insights into RAG function and evolutionary origins, and the discovery of two distinct levels of regulation of somatic hypermutation. Schatz has co-authored over 180 articles, many in prestigious journals, and has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards, including the Rhodes Scholarship, the Snow Prize (Yale University's top award to a graduating senior), the National Science Foundation Presidential Faculty Fellows Award, the American Association of Immunologists-BD Biosciences Investigator Award, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, and election to the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. He has been active as an editor and reviewer, serving as Co-Editor of the journal Immunity, as a member of the editorial board of a number of journals, and as a member and Chair of the NIH study section Cellular and Molecular Immunology-A.  Schatz has also been very interested in graduate education, serving for many years as the Director of Graduate Studies and Graduate Admissions for Immunobiology and as a member of the Executive Committee of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) Program.  He remains strongly committed to enhancing predoctoral and postdoctoral training programs in his current role as Chair of the Department of Immunobiology. Schatz received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry from Yale University in 1980, and a M.A. degree in Philosophy and Politics from Oxford University in 1982. His Ph.D. degree (1990) and postdoctoral training were done with Dr. David Baltimore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research.
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  • Yajaira Suarez, PhD

    Anthony N. Brady Professor of Comparative Medicine and of Pathology; Deputy Chair, Comparative Medicine

    Yajaira studied Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University Autonoma of Madrid (1995). She did her PhD with Miguel Angel Lasuncion at the Hospital Ramón y Cajal and the University Autonoma de Madrid (Spain) (1996-2001). Yajaira also did two post-docs. The first one with Alberto Muñoz at the Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas "Alberto Sols" and the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain) (2002-2005) and the second one with Jordan Pober and Bill Sessa at Yale University School of Medicine (2005-2009). Yajaira initiated her independent research career in the Division of Cardiology at New York University School of Medicine in 2009. She joined the Yale faculty in 2013 as an Assistant Professor of Comparative Medicine and Pathology. Yajaira is currently Anthony N. Brady Professor of Comparative Medicine and also serves as Deputy Chair for the Department of Comparative Medicine.
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  • John S. Tsang, PhD

    Professor of Immunobiology and Biomedical Engineering; Director, Yale Center for Systems and Engineering Immunology (CSEI)

    John Tsang is a systems immunologist, computational biologist, and engineer. Tsang earned his PhD in biophysics and systems biology from Harvard University and trained in computer engineering (BASc) and computer science (MMath) at the University of Waterloo, Canada. He is currently Professor of Immunobiology and Biomedical Engineering at Yale University; he is also the founding Director of the Yale Center for Systems and Engineering Immunology (CSEI), which serves as a home and cross-departmental center of research for systems, quantitative, and synthetic immunology at Yale. Prior to joining Yale, he was a tenured Senior Investigator in the National Institutes of Health's Intramural Research Program and led a laboratory focusing on systems and quantitative immunology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He was the Co-Director of the Trans-NIH Center for Human Immunology (CHI) and led its research program in systems human immunology. He remains an Adjunct Investigator at NIAID. He has won multiple awards for his research, including several NIH/NIAID Merit Awards recognizing his scientific leadership in systems immunology, COVID-19, and human immunology research. His work on human immune variability, systems immunology, and prediction of vaccination responses was selected as a Top NIAID Research Advance of 2014. Tsang has served as an advisor on systems immunology and computational biology for numerous programs and organizations, including the Allen Institute, World Allergy Organization, National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He currently serves on the Editorial Board of PLOS Biology and the Scientific Advisory Board of NIAID ImmPort, the NIAID Influenza IMPRINT Program, the NIH Common Fund Cellular Senescence Network (SenNet), Vaccine and Immunology Statistical Center of the Gates Foundation, the Human Immunome Project, and CytoReason Ltd.
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  • Andrew Wang, MD/PhD, AB

    Assistant Professor

    I obtained my AB from Harvard University and my MD, PhD degrees in 2011 from University of Texas Southwestern with additional training done at the University of Paris. As a part of his MD/PhD training in the laboratories of Drs. Edward Wakeland and Chandra Mohan, I identified a key role for the CXCR4/SDF-1 axis in end-organ targeting (in mouse and man), an important insight in the pathogenesis of SLE. I then did my Internal Medicine internship and residency training at Yale and joined the ABIM Short Track Pathway into the Rheumatology fellowship. I joined the laboratory of Dr. Ruslan Medzhitov in July 2014 for my postdoctoral training.  There, based on my clinical experience as a house officer, I shifted my focus to understanding how inflammation and metabolism are coordinated on an organismal level.  My work in Dr. Medzhitov's laboratory led to the discovery that different inflammatory states are coordinated with different metabolic programs, an important insight into the pathogenesis of many inflammatory diseases.  I joined the faculty as Assistant Professor in Internal Medicine (Rheumatology) in August 2017 and the Immunobiology faculty in July 2019.My lab is generally interested in trying to understand how the environment interacts with the host to affect disease trajectories. We utilize a broad range of techniques spanning disciplines spanning physiology, metabolism, inflammation, neurobiology, and immunology coupled with patient samples. On-going interests:1. Identifying and dissecting environmental determinants of inflammatory diseases. 2. Understanding inflammatory physiology3. Understanding placebo and nocebo physiology.4. Understanding the "moonlighting" functions of the immune system.5. Understanding energy allocation in host defense. (Collaboration with Dr. Rachel Perry)6. Understanding the relationship between cell death and inflammation. (Collaboration with Dr. Aaron Ring)In the clinic, I see patients with inflammatory conditions, many of the times with no clear diagnosis, as well as patients with rheumatologic diseases.
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  • Craig B. Wilen, MD, PhD

    Associate Professor Term; Medical Director, Immune Monitoring Core Facility

    Dr. Wilen is an Associate Professor in Laboratory Medicine and Immunobiology and is focused on the host-pathogen interactions of RNA viruses including coronavirus and norovirus. Dr. Wilen received his A.B in Biology and Economics at Washington University in St. Louis, his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His residency training was in clinical pathology at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, MO. His postdoctoral studies were conducted in the laboratory of Herbert "Skip" Virgin at Washington University School of Medicine where he studied the pathogenesis of norovirus, the leading cause of acute gastroenteritis. Dr. Wilen discovered CD300lf as the first receptor for a norovirus and identified intestinal tuft cells as the physiologic target cell for mouse norovirus infection. Current work in the Wilen lab is focused on identifying novel therapeutic targets for SARS-CoV2 and elucidating mechanisms COVID-19 pathogenesis. The Wilen lab utilizes a diverse array of techniques to achieve these goals with SARS-CoV2 in the BSL3 including single-cell RNA sequencing, genome-wide CRISPR screening, organoid culture, and transgenic mouse models.https://wilenlab.com
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