Alan Aderem Ph.D

Alan Aderem Ph.D General Information

Biography

Dr. Alan Aderem served as President & Director at Center for Infectious Disease Research. Dr. Aderem is a biologist, specializing in immunology and cell biology, with particular emphasis on the innate immune system, generally regarded as the body's first line of defense to any pathogen. His laboratory's research aims to significantly impact global health, focusing on diseases afflicting people the world over, including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and influenza. Aderem is also working to integrate systems biology, an approach he helped pioneer, into programs across the Center with the goal of accelerating vaccine and drug development. Aderem co-founded the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) with Leroy Hood and Ruedi Aebersold in 2000 and served as its Director until 2011. A native of South Africa, Aderem obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Cape Town and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at The Rockefeller University in New York in the laboratory of Dr. Zanvil Cohn. Aderem rose through the ranks at The Rockefeller University, becoming head of the Laboratory of Signal Transduction in 1991. In 1996, he accepted a professorship of Immunology and Medicine at the University of Washington in Seattle.