CHICAGO (TIP): Prof Vinay Kumar has been named the Lowell T. Coggeshall Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Pathology at University of Chicago.

Kumar is a pioneer in the field of the cellular and molecular biology of natural killer cells and a global leader in medical education. He was one of the first to propose the existence of a novel subset of lymphoid cells with antileukemic activity, subsequently identified as natural killer cells. His research has focused on understanding the origin and differentiation of these cells and their role in the rejection of transplanted bone marrow. His group also discovered that mutations in the human perforin gene give rise to severe and fatal disorders of immune dysregulation. This paradigm-shifting work has been recognized as a “pillar of immunology” by the Journal of Immunology.

He is the senior editor and co-author of five pathology textbooks, including Robbins and Cotran Pathologic Basis of Disease, which has been translated into more than 13 languages and is the most widely used pathology text in the world. He has received many honors for his research, including election as a fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Sciences in 2004, and the 2019 Gold Headed Cane Award, which is the highest honor granted by the American Society for Investigative Pathology.