John MacMicking, PhD

John MacMicking is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Investigator, Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and Professor of Immunobiology. 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 interferon (IFN)-induced defense protein in eukaryotes - inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) - engineered between 1992-1995. It served as an early paradigm for cell-autonomous innate 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.