Lewis L. Lanier

Lewis L. Lanier is an American Cancer Society Professor and the J. Michael Bishop MD Distinguished Professor and Chairman of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of California San Francisco and is Leader of the Cancer Immunity Program of the UCSF Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center and Director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at UCSF. Dr. Lanier received his Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. After postdoctoral studies, first at the Lineberg Cancer Center at the UNC – Chapel Hill and then as a Damon Runyon – Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fellow at the University of New Mexico, he joined the Research & Development Department at the Becton Dickinson Monoclonal Center in Mountain View, California, advancing to Associate Director of Research and was a Becton Dickinson Research Fellow. In 1990, he joined the DNAX Research Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Palo Alto, California, where he advanced to Director of Immunobiology. In 1999, Dr. Lanier joined the faculty of UCSF. His research group studies Natural Killer (NK) cells, which recognize and eliminate cells that have become transformed or infected by viruses. In recognition of his scientific contributions he was awarded the William B. Coley Award for Distinguished Research in Basic Tumor Immunology from the Cancer Research Institute in 2002, in 2005 was given the Rose Payne Award for contributions to the field of Immunogenetics by the American Society for Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, in 2010 was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, and in 2011 was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded the 2017 Excellence in Mentoring Award from the American Association of Immunologists, served as President from 2006-2007, and named an AAI Distinguished Fellow in 2019. Dr. Lanier serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of several pharma and biotech companies and research institutes and Editorial boards of scientific journals.