Immunobiology chair named president of new society

Richard A. Flavell, Ph.D., chair and Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, has been elected the first president of the newly formed International Cytokine and Interferon Society (ICIS). The ICIS is a non-profit organization of more than 600 scientists who study interferon, cytokine, and chemokine cell biology, molecular biology, biochemistry, and the clinical use of these biological response modifiers. The society was formed this year through the merger of two existing organizations, the International Society for Interferon and Cytokine Research (ISICR), and the International Cytokine Society.

Flavell received the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science from the ISICR in 2013. He and colleagues have discovered several important receptors of the innate immune system, and he has made major contributions to our understanding of how activation of the innate system triggers the adaptive immune system’s more specialized responses.