Scientific Advisory Board

Dr. Cyster is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and professor and vice-chair in the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, San Francisco. He graduated from the University of Western Australia with a B.S. honors degree in biochemistry and microbiology and completed a Ph.D. in immunology at the University of Oxford in the laboratory of Alan Williams. He was a postdoctoral fellow in immunology at Stanford University with Christopher Goodnow and he joined the faculty at UCSF in 1995.

Jason is internationally recognized for defining how lymphoid microenvironments are organized to support adaptive immunity. His lab played a key role in the discovery of lymphoid tissue chemokines and established the concept that chemokines continuously guide cells to supportive niches.

Jason’s group led the way in defining how cells exit from lymphoid organs, a process essential for immune function. His team established the egress-promoting role of sphingosine-1-phosphate and identified the mechanism of action of key egress regulators. He has been a leader in applying two-photon microscopy to unraveling antigen-encounter and immune cell migration dynamics. He received the 2005 AAI BD Biosciences Investigator Award in recognition of outstanding contributions in immunology and the 2018 AAI Biolegend Herzenberg Award for outstanding contributions in B cell biology. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2014 and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2018.

David J. Rawlings, M.D., is chief in the division of immunology, overseeing the immunodeficiency clinic at Seattle Children’s Hospital. He is also director of the Center for Immunity and Immunotherapies leading the immunology research programs at Seattle Children’s Research Institute. David is professor of pediatrics and adjunct professor in the Department of Immunology at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

He earned his M.D. with honors from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and completed a residency and chief residency in pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. He was an intramural research fellow at the NIH and a senior fellow at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, UCLA. He completed specialty training in pediatric rheumatology and immunology at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and directed the pediatric rheumatology program at UCLA. David has been the recipient of many awards including election to the American Society for Clinical Investigation, Association of American Physicians and the Children’s Hospital Guild Association Endowed Chair in Pediatric Immunology Research. David also co-directs the Northwest Genome Engineering Consortium, a research program funded as part of the NIH Roadmap for Medical Research and focused on developing enzymatic reagents and delivery methods for site specific gene repair in hematopoietic stem cells. His publications include more than 90 peer-reviewed papers and many invited reviews.

David is a member of multiple regional and national organizations, an NIH study section member, chairman for the USIDNET XLA patient registry, and ad hoc reviewer for various grant programs and immunology journals. He also co-directs the Northwest Genome Engineering Consortium, a research program funded as part of the NIH Roadmap focused on developing enzymatic reagents and delivery methods for site specific gene repair in hematopoietic stem cells.