We’re delighted to host Professor Rafi Ahmed, a world-renowned immunologist of cancer and infectious diseases, at Imperial on the 5th of September 2025. He will give a seminar and will be available for meetings.
Professor Ahmed is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Emory University and director of the Emory Vaccine Centre. His work has been highly influential in shaping our current understanding of T cell differentiation and anti-viral T and B cell immunity in acute and chronic infection. Professor Ahmed was the first to describe the phenomenon of T cell exhaustion and was a pioneer in illuminating the role of PDL1/PD1 signalling in this process. This work has directly led to the development of immunotherapies that have revolutionised cancer medicine. More recently, his lab has worked on tracing the origin of exhausted T cells, describing progenitors that respond to immunotherapy. His lab is additionally active in antibody research and have developed methods for rapidly generating human monoclonal antibodies after vaccination, showing that broadly cross-reactive antibodies can be generated after influenza vaccination in humans, giving rise to the possibility of universal influenza vaccines.