Decoding Cancer: Reprogramming T Cells

Underwood-Prescott Professor, Department of Biological Engineering; member, Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT

Michael Birnbaum is the Underwood-Prescott Professor, a professor of biological engineering, and a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. He earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical and physical biology from Harvard University and a PhD from Stanford University, where he worked with K. Christopher Garcia on the molecular mechanisms of T cell receptor recognition, cross-reactivity, and activation. Following a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellowship in Carla Shatz’s lab at Stanford, he joined the MIT faculty and the Koch Institute in 2016.

Birnbaum has received the AACR-TESARO Career Development Award for Immuno-oncology Research, a Packard Fellowship, a Pew-Stewart Scholarship for Cancer Research, a V Foundation for Cancer Research V Scholar Grant, the Michelson Prize for Human Immunology and Vaccine Research, the Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovator Award, and the NIH New Innovator Award. He is cofounder and advisor of Kelonia Therapeutics and Abata Therapeutics.

Assistant Professor of Biology; Phillip and Susan Ragon Career Development Professor; Core Member, Ragon Institute

Alison Ringel is an assistant professor in the Department of Biology at MIT and a core member of the Ragon Institute. She received a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology, biochemistry, and physics from Wesleyan University, then a PhD in molecular biophysics from John Hopkins University School of Medicine. Previously, Ringel was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School. As a T cell immunologist, she investigates how aging, nutrition, and obesity affect the immune responses that control tumorigenesis.