DIABETES NATIONAL RESEARCH GROUP

joanna davies, D.Phil.

Dr. Joanna Davies received a D.Phil. from Oxford University, UK. in Immunology in 1986. She completed post-doctoral fellowships at The Medical Biology Institute, La Jolla, and Cambridge University, UK. before becoming an Assistant Professor at The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, in 1998. In 2001 she moved her laboratory to the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies in La Jolla where she is now a Member. Her research focus is immune regulation, including, autoimmunity, transplant rejection and severe muscle wasting.

Vipin Kumar, Ph.D.

Dr. Kumar is a Member/professor and heads the Laboratory of Autoimmunity at the Institute. Dr. Kumar's research focus is on the immune regulation of "conventional" CD4 and CD8 T cells as well as on the presentation and recognition of myelin-derived glycolipids by a subset of the "non-conventional" NK T cells and their influences on autoimmune disease.

Eli Sercarz, Ph.D.

Eli Sercarz earned his Ph.D. in Immunology at Harvard University in 1960. After serving as a Postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health from 1960-1963, Dr. Sercarz served in various capacities as a professor of Immunology at the University of California at Los Angeles until 1997.

After serving as a member and department head of Immune Regulation at the La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, he served as a member of the Torrey Pines Institute for Molecular Studies until his passing in December of 2009.
Click here to see his memorial page on the Torrey Pines Institiute website.

Valeria Judkowski, Ph.D.

The main focus of my research is the discovery of novel immunological modulators and the understanding of their mechanisms in the regulation of the immune response. In the T cell area, our work includes the identification of novel antigens involved in the activation of autoimmune T cells and the identification of T cell epitopes from human pathogens that could improve diagnostics and vaccine design.