In the hopes of fostering interdisciplinary cooperation and innovation, the new Cornell Center for Immunology will bring together faculty and researchers to continue the University’s immunological research.
According to the University, the center will be directed by Dr. Gary Koretzky ’78, Cornell’s vice provost for academic integration and a rheumatologist, immunologist and professor at Weill Cornell Medicine. Koretzky also holds positions in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the College of Veterinary Medicine in Ithaca.
A “natural choice as the new center’s director,” Koretzky is internationally recognized for his research in dissecting pathways that play a critical role in immune cell development and function, Provost Michael Kotlikoff said in a press release.
Remarking on his vision and unique objective of this center, Koretzky noted that Cornell hopes to distinguish itself by establishing a center apart from a traditional medical school facility.
A spectrum of research and studies will ultimately bring the greatest scientific advancements, and “even though this is the cliche of ‘the sum being greater than the individual parts,’ it’s really true,” Koretzky told the University.
According to the University, the center was proposed by the Infection Biology Task Force.
As a virtual center, The Cornell Center for Immunology will integrate many broad-scale research efforts across different departments and colleges on Cornell’s campus, bolstering ties to ongoing immunological research at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, the University stated.
Recent scientific advances in immunology that address various diseases such as cancer have garnered growing interest in this form of research and medicine, and the immunology center will “take advantage of the Ithaca campus’s unique strengths, such as fundamental science research, single-cell and comparative species analyses, biomedical engineering and advanced imaging,” the University stated.
The center also aims to work in conjunction with faculty and researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and those from the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Agriculture and Life Sciences, Human Ecology, Engineering and Veterinary Medicine.
This will use Cornell’s “great strengths in the biology of immune cells, genetic/genomic determinants of immune mechanisms, vaccine development and comparative immunology. These strengths exist in multiple departments and colleges, but have not been brought together on campus and have not leveraged the strengths of our colleagues at Weill Cornell Medicine,” Kotlikoff told the University.