Andres Hidalgo, PhD

My research sits at the frontier of innate immunity — uncovering how immune cells and their precursors don't merely respond to disease, but actively shape the physiology of our bodies.

As a postdoctoral trainee, I pioneered live imaging approaches to watch inflammation unfold in real time. These tools led to the discovery of the receptors that drive the earliest waves of neutrophil recruitment, and revealed the intravascular signals responsible for the vascular crises that make sickle cell disease so devastating.

In my former position in Spain, my laboratory pushed these technologies further, deploying them across the lung, brain, and heart to expose the hidden machinery of thrombo-inflammation. Among our most unexpected findings: neutrophils don't just patrol the body — they travel to the bone marrow and actively entrain the circadian rhythms of hematopoietic precursors in that organ. This discovery opened a new line of inquiry into how the immune system keeps time, revealing the molecular clockworks that govern when neutrophils migrate, what genes they express, and when they unleash their toxic arsenal.

Now, as a Professor at Yale, my lab is tackling some of the deepest open questions in immunology: What rules govern how innate immune cells distribute themselves across tissues? How do they acquire specialized identities — and what are the functional consequences of that specialization for inflammation, infection, and regeneration? We've already shown that pulmonary neutrophils carry transcriptional programs that favor vessel formation, whereas those from the skin build the extracellular matrix that confers its barrier properties. The implications are far-reaching into cancer and aging in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Beyond discovery, I am driven to develop the next generation of scientists. I am committed to building a lab culture where curiosity thrives, rigor is celebrated, and trainees at every stage — from first-year undergraduates to postdocs launching their own careers — find both the challenge and the support they need to flourish.