LA JOLLA, CA—LJI Professor Shane Crotty, PhD, has been appointed Chief Scientific Officer of La Jolla Institute for Immunology (LJI). In this role, Dr. Crotty will lead LJI’s overall scientific strategy, as well as oversee research operations to support the success of the Institute’s scientific initiatives. He will assume his new position on September 1, 2023.
“Shane is an insightful and creative thinker, with an exceptional breadth and depth of knowledge. He deeply understands all the research of the institute and the opportunities that it creates for human health,” said Erica Ollmann Saphire Ph.D. MBA, President and CEO. “Shane’s visionary leadership and foresight became newly apparent as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded and his collaborations guided vaccine efforts worldwide. He is already building exciting momentum, and I’m truly thrilled to work together with him to build LJI’s future. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
“I am incredibly honored to have been selected to help guide the scientific direction of LJI”, says Crotty. “We are at an inflection point in our understanding of the immune system’s central role in both health and disease and I can’t think of a better place to be than LJI during this exciting time in immunology.”
Crotty is known as a global leader in vaccine research who applied his expertise to dissect the human immune response to SARS-CoV-2 as the COVID-19 outbreak evolved into a full-blown pandemic. His findings were published in a series of high-impact papers that were repeatedly lauded in congressional and White House hearings and helped inform public health measures at the federal level.
In recognition of his groundbreaking research, Crotty has been the recipient of many awards and honors, most recently the AAI-BioLegend Herzenberg Award for B Cell Research, the Cancer Research Institute’s (CRI) Award for New Discoveries in Immunology, a 2021 NIH MERIT Award, election to the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and being named as a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences. It has also landed him on Clarivate’s list of “Highly Cited Researchers”, who are among the top 1% based on their scientific impact, for each of the last seven years.
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