 | Richard A. Flavell |
Richard A. Flavell, who was recently appointed Sterling Professor of Immunology, is known for his pioneering research on human and animal gene structure and critical genes of the immune system.
Flavell's laboratory is working to understand how the immune system recognizes and responds to foreign infectious agents and why it sometimes attacks the body's own cells in diseases such as autoimmune diabetes. Using transgenic and gene-targeted mice, Flavell is studying T cell tolerance and activation in immunity and autoimmunity, apoptosis and regulation of T cell activation.
Flavell holds three patents for polypeptides (complex chains of amino acids), which are used in the diagnosis of Lyme disease and in vivo research.
He earned a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in biochemistry from the University of Hull, Great Britain, and was a postdoctoral fellow with the European Programme of the Royal Society of Great Britain and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).
After serving on the faculty of the University of Amsterdam 1974 to 1979, Flavell became head of the Laboratory of Gene Structure and Expression at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, serving until 1982. He then joined Biogen N.V., a biopharmaceutical company based in Geneva, Switzerland, that is a leader in the field of genetic engineering. He served for six years as president of the company's research and development facility in Cambridge, Massachusetts; when the company moved its headquarters to the United States, Flavell became Biogen's chief scientific officer.
Since 1988, Flavell has served as chair of the Section of Immunobiology at the Yale School of Medicine and as an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His appointment to a Sterling Professorship is one of the highest tributes Yale gives to faculty members.
The author of numerous scientific papers, Flavell has served as an editor or board member for over a dozen scientific journals during his career. He is currently editor of Immunity, transmitting editor of International Immunity, and associate editor of Gene Screen and Genes to Cells.
His numerous honors include the 1980 Colworth Medal, awarded to the most promising British biochemist under age 35; the Federation of European Societies Anniversary Prize; and election to the EMBO, The Royal Society, the fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
He was the Darwin Trust Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh in 1995 and is a member of the American Association of Immunologists and the New York Academy of Sciences.
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