Ronald N Germain
I received my M.D. and Ph.D. in 1976 from Harvard University, the latter for research with B. Benacerraf, recipient of the 1980 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. Since that time, I have investigated basic immunobiology, first on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, from 1982-2011 as the Chief, Lymphocyte Biology Section, Laboratory of Immunology, NIAID, NIH, and from 2011 as Chief, Laboratory of Systems Biology, NIAID, NIH. Over the years, my research group has made key contributions to understanding Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC) class II molecule structure–function relationships, the cell biology of antigen processing, and the molecular basis of T cell recognition. More recently, the laboratory has been focused on the details of T cell-antigen presenting cell interactions and the relationship between immune tissue organization and control of adaptive and innate immunity. Experiments at the whole cell, tissue, and organism level have been used to build a more complete picture of the operation of the adaptive immune system, including those utilizing novel dynamic and multiplex static imaging methods that my laboratory helped pioneer. Efforts are also underway to create computer models of T cell and TLR signaling based on these studies. The aim of this work is to create a detailed understanding of how the immune system operates and to develop new tools for prediction of how the immune system will respond if perturbed, for example, by a candidate vaccine by creating and applying the next generation of computer software and research tools for quantitative modeling and simulation of complex biological systems. I have published more than 300 scholarly research papers and reviews. Among numerous honors, I was elected as an Associate (foreign) member of EMBO (2008), a member of the IOM, NAS (2013), an honorary member of the Scandinavian Society for Immunology (2011), awarded the Landsteiner Medal of the Austrian Society for Allerology and Immunology (2008), chosen as an NIH Distinguished Investigator (2011), and invited to present numerous named lectureships at major academic institutions in the US and abroad. I serve as an associate or advisory editor of the J Exp Med, Immunity, Current Biology, Mol Systems Biol, and Int Immunol, and have previously served as Deputy Editor of J Immunol and Editor, Immunity. I helped co-found the Immunology Interest Group and Systems Biology Interest Group at NIH and currently serve as Associate Director for the trans-NIH Center for Human Immunology. The Lymphocyte Biology Section I lead has trained dozens of postdoctoral fellows, many of whom now occupy senior academic posts and are internationally recognized investigators.
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