15 Facts About Akiko Iwasaki

Akiko Iwasaki is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University.

Akiko Iwasaki is a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Akiko Iwasaki was born and raised in Iga, Japan by her father Hiroshi, a physicist, and mother Fumiko, who fought for women's rights in the workplace.

Akiko Iwasaki had hopes of becoming a mathematician or physicist like her father.

Akiko Iwasaki earned her doctoral degree in immunology from the University of Toronto in 1998.

Akiko Iwasaki did her postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in the lab of mucosal immunologist Brian Lee Kelsall.

In 2022, Akiko Iwasaki was awarded a Sterling Professorship, the highest academic honor professors receive at Yale University.

Akiko Iwasaki's research continues to focus on understanding innate immunity and how that information is used to produce protective adaptive immunity.

Akiko Iwasaki has developed a two-stage vaccination strategy called "prime and pull" that involves a conventional vaccine as a first step and then application of chemokines to the target tissue as a second step.

Akiko Iwasaki's group was notably the first to create a mouse model of a vaginal Zika infection.

Akiko Iwasaki is examining the effects of Long COVID and other syndromes that occur following acute infections.

In January 2015, one of Akiko Iwasaki's studies was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Akiko Iwasaki is well known as an advocate for women in science, including voicing support for affordable childcare.

Akiko Iwasaki has gained a following on Twitter for her public health advice about COVID-19, advocating for social distancing early in the pandemic.

Akiko Iwasaki is married to Ruslan Medzhitov, a professor of immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine.