Speakers

David Artis, PhD, Director, Jill Roberts Institute for Research in Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Michael Kors Professor of Immunology, Department of Medicine, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Weill Cornell Medicine

Dr. Artis completed his doctoral research training at the University of Manchester, UK focusing on regulation of immunity and inflammation in the intestine. Following receipt of a Wellcome Trust Prize Traveling Fellowship, he undertook his post-doctoral fellowship training at the University of Pennsylvania, where he continued his research training in examining the regulation of immune responses at barrier surfaces. Dr. Artis joined the faculty at Penn in 2005 and became a Professor of Microbiology in 2014. Dr. Artis moved to Cornell University and became the Michael Kors Professor of Immunology and Director of the Jill Roberts Institute for IBD Research at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City in 2014. Dr. Artis has developed a research program focused on dissecting the pathways that regulate innate and adaptive immune cell function at barrier surfaces in the context of health and disease. His research program also encompasses a significant effort to translate research findings in pre-clinical models into patient-based studies of immune-mediated diseases. Dr. Artis is funded by NIH, CCFA and BWF and has been the recipient of Young Investigator Awards from AAI, CCFA and ICIS, the Colyton Prize, the Stanley Cohen Prize and the AAI-BD Biosciences Investigator Award.

Albert Bendelac, MD, PhD, A.N. Pritzker Professor, Committee on Immunology, Department of Pathology, The University of Chicago

Dr. Bendelac obtained his MD PhD in Paris, France and joined the Ronald Schwartz’s laboratory for postdoctoral research during which he first identified NKT cells. He established his independent laboratory at Princeton University in 1994 and moved to the University of Chicago in 2002 as Chair of the Committee on Immunology. Dr Bendelac has a longstanding interest in the development and function of innate and innate-like lymphocytes. His early studies identified NKT cells, demonstrated their recognition of CD1d-lipid complexes by semi-invariant TCRs, and characterized the cell biology of lipid antigen capture, processing and loading. The Bendelac group used CD1d tetramers to characterize the different stages and the molecular mechanisms of NKT cell development. These studies led in the identification of their master transcription factor PLZF. The critical role of PLZF was extended to innate lymphoid cells (ILC) and PLZF expression was used to define the common ILC precursor in the bone marrow. More recently, the Bendelac group has studied innate-like lymphocytes in the intestinal mucosa, using single cell approaches to demonstrate the MHC-crossreactive nature of intraepithelial lymphocytes and the polyreactive nature of intestinal IgA

Richard Blumberg, MD, Chief, Division of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Endoscopy, Professor, Harvard Medical School

Dan Cua, PhD, Senior Principal Scientist, Immuno-Oncology Discovery, Merck

Dr. Cua completed his Doctorate Degree with at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Immunology at University of Southern California. He continued his postdoctoral training at DNAX Research Institute, Palo Alto California. He is currently Group Leader, Immunology Discovery and Immuno-Oncology Discovery at Merck Research Laboratories. Dr. Cua has contributed to medical literature with more than 110 original articles with 36,200 citations and h-index 59 (Google Scholar). In 2003, his work appearing in the journal Nature demonstrated that IL-23 is a critical cytokine that promotes autoimmune inflammatory disorders. This work led to the proposal of the Th17 Immune Axis hypothesis (2005), which formed the basis for the successful clinical testing of anti-IL-17, anti-IL-23 and RORt inhibitors for treatment of chronic inflammatory disorders. More recently, his group has leveraged their expertise to study novel immune modulatory receptors on T cells and myeloid cells for immunotherapy of autoimmunity and cancer.

Satya Dandekar, PhD, Professor of Microbiology, Chairperson of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, UC Davis School of Medicine

Dr. Satya Dandekar is professor and chair in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine, University of California, Davis. She is also the core scientist at the California national primate research center. Her research program has been focused on HIV pathogenesis with specific emphasis on gut mucosal immunity and host-pathogen interactions. Her laboratory made seminal contributions towards understanding of the mechanisms of gut inflammation and viral dissemination and persistence during the early and advanced stages of HIV and SIV infections and on gut mucosal repair/regeneration and immune restoration during therapy. Current studies are investigating the role of gut microbiota in the repair of inflamed intestine during chronic viral infections and for viral eradication. Her multi-disciplinary research program has been supported by NIH and non-federal organizations. 

Sarah Gaffen, PhD, Gerald P. Rodnan Professor, Division of Rheumatology & Clinical Immunology, Director, Basic Rheumatology Research, University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Sarah Gaffen is the Gerald P. Rodnan Professor in the Division of Rheumatology & Clinical Immunology, at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Gaffen did her undergraduate training at Carnegie Mellon University and received her PhD from UC Berkeley under the guidance of National Academy of Science member Dr. Marian Koshland. Dr. Gaffen did postdoctoral work at UC San Francisco and was on the faculty at SUNY Buffalo from 1999-2008, where she initiated her work on defining mechanisms of signaling by the then-enigmatic IL-17 receptor cytokine family. Since 2008 she has been at the University of Pittsburgh, and was honored with the Gerald P. Rodnan Chair in 2015. Dr. Gaffen is one of the pioneers of studies of the signaling functions and structural features of the IL-17 receptor. The Gaffen Lab also works on understanding the basis for immunity to infections and autoimmunity, with a major interest in the mechanisms that underlie oral mucosal immunity and antifungal host defense. Her group was the first to demonstrate a role for IL-17 pathways in immunity to mucosal Candida albicans infections. Additionally, her recent work has uncovered important post-transcriptional pathways that determine IL-17 signaling cascades. Dr. Gaffen has published over 100 papers and is the Chair of the standing NIH study section “Immunity and Host Defense.” She has been continually funded by NIH since 2001, and has mentored 11 students to completion of a PhD. Her trainees work all over the world in both academia and industry.

Gary Huffnagle, PhD, Professor, Microbiology & Immunology, University of Michigan Medical School

Gary B. Huffnagle, PhD holds faculty appointments (Professor) in Internal Medicine, Microbiology & Immunology, and Molecular Cellular & Developmental Biology, as well as the Mary H. Weiser Food Allergy Center at the University of Michigan. He also holds the Nina and Jerry D Luptak Professorship at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD in immunology from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School and was elected to the American Academy of Microbiology of the American Society for Microbiology in 2013.  He has been a frequent reviewer for the National Institutes of Health, including standing membership for multiple study sections. He has published over 180 peer-reviewed publications with an h-index of 57 and >9700 citations (July 2018). He is also the Associate Director of the T32 Multidisciplinary Training Program in Lung Disease training grant, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Curriculum for the MCDB Department and the Chair of the inter-college, inter-departmental undergraduate Microbiology Major at the University of Michigan.  He teaches a series courses in microbial pathogenesis, host immunity, bacteriology and microbial genomics to students ranging from sophomores to graduate students. His research career was initially dedicated to understanding the mechanisms underlying how the immune system eliminates microbes from the lungs and other mucosal sites. His laboratory then adopted new technologies and computational approaches to study the interactions of the microbiome in the lungs and gut with the immune system during health and disease.

Iliyan Iliev, PhD, Professor, Department of Medicine, Jill Roberts Institute for Research in IBD, Weill Cornell Medical College

Iliyan Iliev is an Immunologist and currently a professor at the Department of Medicine at the Jill Roberts Institute for Research in IBD at Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. He earned his PhD from the European School of Molecular Medicine and the University of Milan and was previously associated with the Tohoku University in Japan, the European Molecular Biology Organization in Germany and the Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Dr. Iliev’s laboratory studies the interaction between commensal microbiota and the immune cells at the mucosal surfaces of the body. The lab is specifically focused on understanding the functional consequences of fungal microbiota (mycobiota) composition and metabolism to the host immunity and to bacterial populations in the gut. In this effort, the team has developed in vivo models, model fungal strains, and bioinformatics pipelines to study the role of gut fungi in mucosal immunity during health and during conditions, such as inflammatory bowel disease, allergy and immunosuppression, where fungi contribute to pathologies.

Akiko Iwasaki, PhD, Investigator, HHMI, Department of Immunobiology, Yale University School of Medicine

Akiko Iwasaki received her PhD from the University of Toronto (Canada) in 1998, and her postdoctoral training from the National Institutes of Health (USA) (1998-2000). She joined Yale University (USA) as a faculty in 2000, and currently is an Investigator of the HHMI and Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Department of Immunobiology, of Department of Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, and of Dermatology. Akiko Iwasaki’s research focuses on the mechanisms of immune defense against viruses at the mucosal surfaces. Her laboratory is interested in how innate recognition of viral infections lead to the generation of adaptive immunity, and how adaptive immunity mediates protection against subsequent viral challenge.

Ed Lavelle, PhD, Professor, School of Biochemistry and Immunology, Trinity College Dublin

Ed Lavelle graduated with a BSc in Microbiology from University College Galway and a PhD in Immunology from the University of Plymouth. He carried our postdoctoral research at the University of Nottingham, Rowett Research Institute and Trinity College Dublin on vaccine adjuvants and immunomodulation. He was appointed at Trinity College Dublin as a lecturer in 2004, associate Professor in 2012 and Professor in Immunology in 2015. His main research area is the mechanism by which injectable and mucosal vaccine adjuvants modulate innate and adaptive immune responses. His work has been published in journals including Immunity, PNAS, J. Exp Med, PLoS Pathogens and Nature Immunology. The group works closely with a number of Biotech companies and also with international Pharma engaged in vaccine research. He is currently President of the Irish Society for Immunology and head of the School of Biochemistry and Immunology at Trinity College Dublin.

Sarkis Mazmanian, PhD, Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology, Investigator, Heritage Medical Research Institute, Division of Biology and Biological Engineering, California Institute of Technology

Sarkis K. Mazmanian, PhD is a medical microbiologist and currently the Luis & Nelly Soux Professor of Microbiology in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Mazmanian’ s research focuses on how gut bacteria influence the development and function of the immune and nervous systems, with the goal of understanding how the microbiome contributes to the critical balance between human health and diseases such as autism and Parkinson’s disease. He has been recognized by numerous awards including the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” award, the Searle Scholar Award, the Damon Runyon Innovation Award, the W.M. Keck Research Excellence Award, and the “Best Brains in Science” by Discover Magazine. His laboratory aims to develop novel therapies for neurologic disorders by exploring and harnessing the extraordinary impacts of the gut microbiome. Dr. Mazmanian is a founder of two biotech companies and has served or currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of over a dozen companies, academic centers and not-for-profit foundations. Most importantly, Dr. Mazmanian has trained numerous students and postdoctoral fellows who have gone on to successful independent careers in medicine, industry and academia.