Chair’s Letter – December 2023
Dear friends,
2023 was another big year for UW Immunology! Our collaborative, cutting-edge faculty continue to train the next generation of world-class immunologists and we remain recognized as a top Immunology program globally. My vision for building the department across multiple levels while strengthening our community is taking shape, and we hope that you too will be involved!
The UW Immunology department continues to fulfill our departmental mission of advancing understanding of the immune system in all aspects of human health. Three of our Associate Professors were promoted to full Professor – myself, Andrew Oberst, and Ram Savan. Professor Phil Greenberg was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in well-deserved recognition of his research elucidating T cell responses to both tumors and chronic viral antigens. Professor Michael Gale, Jr. was again listed on the Highly Cited Researchers list from Clarivate, placing him among the top 1% of all cited researchers in the world. We continue to attract excellent graduate students into the Immunology graduate program, with a first-year class of nine students in 2023 and an 8% acceptance rate. And we are very proud of our dynamic community of postdocs who go on to productive scientific careers, and many of whom are awarded highly competitive funding.
A major goal for this past year was building the UW Immunology department and larger community, starting with the recruitment of new Assistant Professors. We are thrilled to welcome Autumn York, PhD, who started this fall as our first new tenure-track Assistant Professor. Autumn joins us after completing her postdoctoral fellowship at Yale in the Flavell lab, where she was selected as an HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellow. Her exciting work on immunometabolomics creates a new niche for the department and many opportunities for collaboration. Our affiliate and adjunct faculty remain critically important members of our community, and we welcome new Affiliate Assistant Professor Shivani Srivastava, PhD, from Fred Hutch. We have additionally hired a new departmental Administrator, Susan Worden, an Operations Manager, Lisa Billings, and two new grants managers, Mesfin Moreda and Mike Vu.
We have also launched two new institutes that will help foster our research and training missions. The Institute for Translational Immunology (ITI) will provide postdoctoral funding and training to support the next generation of immunology leaders in both academia and industry. The Seattle Hub for Synthetic Biology, a landmark collaboration between the Allen Institute, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the University of Washington, will design cutting-edge technologies to monitor and record cell signaling and function in both immune and developing cells. In addition to their stated missions, both initiatives will create new networks of collaborators and access to novel technologies that will advance immunological research.
We continue to work towards the goals articulated in our DEI Roadmap, our blueprint to build a more diverse, equitable and inclusive community. And our Outreach Committee has continued its partnerships with local organizations and high schools to support historically underrepresented students.
I am so grateful to everyone in our community, especially alumni and emeriti who continue to support us through donations, job opportunities for our trainees and ongoing engagement. If you’d like to support us in 2024, please consider making a donation or becoming part of the ITI mentoring or alumni network (email immcasst@uw.edu). Please also get in touch if you have ideas to share about how we can continue to make UW Immunology the best place to do immunological research. Thank you and I wish you all a very happy, safe, and restorative holiday season!
Best wishes,
Marion Pepper, PhD
Professor and Chair
Department of Immunology
University of Washington
