The 2021 ICIS-Luminex John R. Kettman Award for Excellence in Interferon & Cytokine Research Mid-career recognizes Marion Pepper, PhD as being in the very top tier of the current wave of mid-career immunologists who continue to make cytokine research exciting.
Dr. Howard Young has been chosen to be the first recipient of the newly established ICIS Mentorship Award in recognition of significant and sustained contributions to the career development of trainees and to the profession through outstanding mentoring over four decades. Howard has trained a number of post-docs and post-bacs who have gone on to establish their own labs around the world and who, in turn, mentored hundreds of additional trainees following the example that Howard set of promoting high-level human and scientific interactions.
K. Christopher Garcia has been chosen as the 2021 ICIS-BioLegend William E. Paul Award winner in recognition of his enormous contributions to understanding receptor-ligand interactions which is unparalleled in the area of cytokine and interferon research. This award is bestowed on Dr. Garcia for his unwavering commitment to visualizing the fascinating architectures of cytokine-receptor interaction, his pivotal role in all the major advances in understanding the structural basis for how cytokine receptors engage and signal in response to cytokine binding, and for his innovative use of protein engineering to translate this information into the development of new therapeutic strategies and molecules. His application of traditional principles of pharmacology used in small molecule drug discovery to cytokine systems has initiated a new field of cytokine pharmacology.
