By Kendall Teare
Autumn York, a postdoctoral researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, has been selected as a Hanna H. Gray Fellow by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
York is one of fifteen “exceptional” early-career scientists selected as the inaugural cohort of Hanna H. Gray Fellows, a two-phase fellowship that supports fellows from their early postdoctoral training through several years in a tenure-track faculty position. Each fellow will receive up to $1.4 million in funding, with mentoring and active involvement within the HHMI community. The Hanna H. Gray Fellows program “seeks to increase diversity in the biomedical research community by recruitment and retention of individuals from groups underrepresented in the life sciences.” The program is named for Hanna Holborn Gray, former chair of the HHMI Trustees and former president of the University of Chicago. HHMI decided to name the honor for Gray, for under her leadership, HHMI developed programs to foster diversity in science education.
York is a postdoctoral researcher in the Flavell immunobiology lab, working there under the mentorship of the lab’s principal investigator, Richard Flavell. York’s current research investigates “how the immune system interacts with the body’s metabolic pathways to control inflammation,” as unchecked inflammation is the “hidden culprit behind many diseases.” This work may eventually result in new ways to prevent the progression of myriad diseases that involve significant inflammation, including inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s.