Katherine Fitzgerald is awarded the 2024 ICIS-Howard A. Young Distinguished Service Award in recognition of her extraordinary contributions to the ICIS, most especially her presidential leadership during the two worst years of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a highly successful Professor and investigator with a strong commitment to the future of immunological sciences, she has risen to the highest level of scientific excellence in our field, yet she still finds the time to provide “above and beyond” service that furthers the goals of the ICIS. Professor Fitzgerald is a role model for all cytokine biologists, personifying the standard of service to the organization established by Howard A. Young himself.
Dr. Fitzgerald, the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research Chair, Professor of Medicine, Vice Provost for Basic Science Research and Vice Chair for Research in the Department of Medicine and Director of the Program in Innate Immunity, has been widely recognized for her pioneering work on innate immune receptors, signaling pathways and regulation of inflammatory gene expression.
Dr. Fitzgerald is an elected fellow of the American Society of Microbiology and an elected member of the Royal Irish Academy, the National Academy of Sciences (USA) and the National Academy of Medicine (USA). She is the recipient of several awards including the Thermo-Fischer Meritorious Career Award (from the American Association of Immunology), the Saint Patrick’s Day Medal (from the Irish Government and Science Foundation Ireland) and the Milstein Award for Excellence in Interferon and Cytokine research (from the International Cytokine and Interferon Society), amongst others.
She has extensive service both locally at UMass Chan and nationally including service on local and national advisory boards (e.g., Massachusetts Center For Pathogen Readiness, NIAID Board of Scientific Councillors, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases and the Cancer Research Institute). She was also the recent past President of the International Cytokine and Interferon Society from October 2019 through October 2021. She has been co-chair of the ICIS Awards Committee since 2019
Research Information Her work is focused on the innate immune system aimed at understanding the molecular basis of the inflammatory response during Infection and in inflammatory diseases. In particular her group studies nucleic acid sensors, inflammasomes as well as long non-coding RNAs in immunity and inflammation. The long-term goal of her work is to determine how innate immune sensing and signaling contribute to infectious, inflammatory, and autoimmune diseases in humans.
Pandemic memories
At each Annual Scientific Meeting there shall be an Annual Business Meeting of the Membership of the Society, presided over by the President. Five percent of the Members shall constitute a quorum. This is the presentation of the 2020 Annual Business Meeting of the International Cytokine & Interferon Society which was postponed when the Annual meeting was not able to take place in Seattle and pivoted to a Virtual Meeting. We invite members of the ICIS as well as others interested in cytokine biology, to view the presentation. Members can leave comments for ICIS Leadership using the embedded survey form.
