Dr. Ronald Germain is chief of the Lymphocyte Biology Section and Laboratory of Systems Biology at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, NIH. His research contributes to the understanding of how the immune system functions from the molecular level up to the level of the organism. He’s helped elucidate the expression, structure, and function of antigen-presenting proteins; the cell biology of antigen processing; and the molecular basis of T cell recognition. His research group is currently focused on two different approaches to unraveling the integrated function of the immune system: (1) using advanced imaging techniques to understand immune cell dynamics and the role of tissue micro-anatomy in host defense and (2) using systems methods to quantitatively understand immunity at multiple scales. Dr. Germain received his BS and MS from Brown University in 1970 and his MD and PhD from Harvard Medical School and Harvard University in 1976.
Details about Dr. Ronald Germian’s proposal to reform the NIH R01 system can be found in his commentary “Healing the NIH-Funded Biomedical Research Enterprise” and in his iBiology talk ““NIH Funding Should Support People, Not Projects.”
Germain’s views in this Q&A are his own and not those of the NIAID, NIH, or DHHS.
