Nominate yourself of someone else now. Nominations are accepted until Thursday, April 30, 2026.
The Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate and Post Graduate Awards
Sponsored by PBL Assay Science
Description: The Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate and Post-Graduate Awards, generously sponsored by PBL Assay Science, are targeted to graduate students and post-doctoral fellows who have begun to make an impact in interferon and cytokine research. The Awards are designed to fill the gap among the awards currently offered by the ICIS to more senior investigators. Candidates must be actively working in interferon/cytokine research but need not be ICIS members. This is an annual award, and a recipient may receive an award only once. However, an individual who receives the Graduate Award remains eligible for the Post-Graduate Award. In years where a suitable candidate is not identified, an award will not be bestowed.
Award: $3,500 cash award, $1,500 travel grant, a $2,500 PBL Assay Science product credit for each awardee. These awards are sponsored by PBL Assay Science. The Awardees will be invited for an Oral presentation during the Meeting.
Deadline to apply/nominate for the 2026 awards is April 30, 2026.
Each awardee will receive a check in the amount of $5000 payable to the awardee at the annual ICIS Awards Ceremony. Should an awardee not attend the annual ICIS meeting, a travel grant will not be awarded and that awardee will receive a check in the amount of $3500 following the ICIS meeting. Each awardee will also receive a $2500 product credit from PBL Assay Science good for one year from the date of the award. This is an annual award, and a recipient may receive an award only once. An individual who receives the Graduate Award, however, remains eligible for the Post-Graduate Award. One award will be given to a graduate student and one award to a post-doctoral fellow where candidates of suitable caliber are identified. In years where a suitable candidate is not identified, an award will not be bestowed.
Submission Guidelines
Nominations and Applications for the Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate & Post Graduate Awards must include the following:
- An abbreviated CV (max. 3-5 pages) together with a letter of recommendation detailing the accomplishments of the nominee (including confirmation of eligibility) should be uploaded as a combined PDF document.
- No proprietary or confidential information can be included in the application.
- Submission Deadline: April 10, 2026 for all Young Investigator Awards:
Winners of the 2026 Young Investigators Awards will be required to register for Cytokines 2026 and submit an abstract by May 18, 2026 (information will be provided in the acceptance letter). All ICIS Young Investigator Award winners will be invited to make an oral presentation in the program.
The application and/or letters of nomination are submitted via the ICIS website online nomination form above.
- ICIS members may either apply themselves or nominate other eligible members for either the Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate or Post-Graduate Awards. An abbreviated CV (max. 3-5 pages) and a recommendation letter from mentor, including confirmation of eligibility as well as a statement of research and accomplishments should be included in the submission. Additional supporting materials, such as posters and publications, are welcome. No proprietary or confidential information can be included in the application. It should be noted that the awardees will be judged based on the following criteria which should be included in the nomination letter:
- outstanding publications in the field
- contributions to the cytokine/chemokine/ interferon field either in basic, clinical or applied research
- prospects for a future career in cytokine biology, either in academics, government or industry
- Deadline for submissions is April 30, 2026
- Applicants must also submit an abstract by the May 18, 2026 abstract submission deadline, for consideration at the meeting, which will determine which session their oral presentation will be scheduled into by the scientific organizing committee.
Congratulations 2025 Award Winners!
Post-Graduate Award Winner
Alexander Lercher is currently an HFSP long-term fellow and Harvey L. Karp postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Charles M. Rice at the Rockefeller University in New York. His research focuses on immunological decision points shaping viral disease and how past inflammatory events can result in durable antigen-independent innate immunity, enabling cross-protection against heterologous pathogens. He recently uncovered a mechanism whereby past SARS-CoV-2 infection and type I interferon signaling leads to establishment of epigenetic memory in alveolar macrophages that specifically enhances secondary antiviral responses. This potent antiviral innate immune memory was necessary and sufficient to ameliorate disease caused by secondary infection with the unrelated respiratory pathogen influenza A virus.
Alex earned his Ph.D. in Immunology in 2020 under the mentorship of Andreas Bergthaler at CeMM, Vienna, where he investigated immune-metabolic crosstalk in viral hepatitis. He discovered that antiviral type I interferon signaling leads to profound metabolic reprogramming in hepatocytes, which in turn alters circulating metabolite levels during viral infection. This altered serum metabolite homeostasis – particularly in levels of the amino acid arginine and its downstream metabolite, ornithine – creates a tissue-protective feedback loop by dampening antiviral T cell responses and T cell mediated tissue damage. Alex obtained his Master’s degree from the University of Vienna in 2015, studying virus-host interaction and molecular determinants of chronic viral infection.
Connect with Dr. Lercher on X: @alex_lercher, @RockefellerUniv
and Bluesky: @alercher.bsky.social, @rockefelleruniv.bsky.social
Graduate Award Winner
Kathleen Mills was born in London, England, and grew up there and in North Carolina, USA. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Chicago, where she worked in Dr. Anne Sperling’s lab researching the protective effects of IL-5 in acute lung injury. Kathleen is a recent PhD graduate from Weill Cornell Graduate School in New York City, where she was in the Immunology and Microbial Pathogenesis program. She was mentored by Dr. Tobias Hohl at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Her dissertation research focused on the role of GM-CSF in defense against a respiratory mold pathogen. She found that epithelial-immune cell crosstalk mediated by GM-CSF and downstream of IL-1 and IFN-λ is required for immune cell killing of fungal spores and subsequent host survival. This fall, she begins a postdoc at Boston University in the Center for Regenerative Medicine.
Past Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate and Post-Graduate Award Winners
2020 Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate & Post Graduate Award Winners
Generously sponsored by PBL Assay Science.
POST-GRADUATE AWARD WINNER
Autumn York, PhD
Hanna H. Gray Postdoctoral Fellow
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Laboratory of Richard Flavell
Department of Immunobiology
Yale University
New Haven, United States
Dr. Autumn York is an HHMI Hanna Gray Fellow in Dr. Richard Flavell’s lab in the Department of Immunobiology at Yale University. Her postdoctoral research investigates how the immune system interacts with the body’s metabolic pathways to control inflammation and maintain tissue homeostasis.
Autumn received her PhD from University of California, Los Angeles under the supervision of Steven Bensinger, VDM, PhD, where she was a pre-doctoral fellow of the California HIV/AIDS Research Program. During her graduate studies, Autumn delineated a metabolic-inflammatory circuit that linked perturbations in cholesterol biosynthesis with activation of innate immunity via STING/type I interferon signaling. Autumn completed her undergraduate studies with Dr. Dylan Taatjes at University of Colorado- Boulder, where she graduated magna cum laude from the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
https://medicine.yale.edu/immuno/profile/autumn_york/
https://twitter.com/AutumnYork
Dr. York will give a virtual oral presentation at Cytokines 2020 Virtual Meeting in November!
GRADUATE AWARD WINNER
Jack Major
PhD Student (4th and final year), Francis Crick Institute.
Present Immunoregulation laboratory (student at Imperial College London)
Primary PhD supervisor: Dr Andreas Wack.
Jack is currently a fourth and final year PhD student in the lab of Dr Andreas Wack at the Francis Crick Institute, London. His graduate research looks at how host antiviral immune responses can be harmful during respiratory viral infection. Specifically, Jack and his co-authors found that type I and III interferons interfere with lung repair during recovery from influenza virus infection, by blocking respiratory epithelial cell proliferation and differentiation. In his infection model, he found that interferon treatment late during the course of infection exacerbates lung damage, which may have implications for ongoing clinical trials testing the efficacy of interferons in treating patients with COVID-19.
Before moving to the Crick institute, Jack completed his undergraduate degree in Immunology at the University of Glasgow, in 2015. He then remained in Glasgow for a year, working as a research technician at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Molecular Parasitology, studying the biology of the apicomplexan parasite Toxoplasma gondii.
Jack Major will give a virtual oral presentation at Cytokines 2020 Virtual Meeting in November!
2019 Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate and Post-Graduate Award Winners
2018 Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate and Post-Graduate Award Winners
2017 Sidney & Joan Pestka Graduate and Post-Graduate Award Winners
2016 Graduate Awardee
2016 Postgraduate Awardee
THE 2010 INAUGURAL SIDNEY & JOAN PESTKA POST-GRADUATE AWARD:
Dr. Anette H. H. van Boxel-Dezaire
THE 2010 INAUGURAL THE SIDNEY & JOAN PESTKA GRADUATE AWARD:
Seth G Thacker
