Diane Mathis

Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts ~Professor of Microbiology and Immunobiology. Immunologist focused on T-cell tolerance: its establishment/maintenance and its breakdown resulting in autoimmunity. Made contributions to the elucidation of mechanisms underlying type 1 (autoimmune) diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis at both the cellular and molecular levels. Known for engineering widely used transgenic and gene-targeted murine models and for pioneering the application of gene-expression profiling and non-invasive imaging to the field of tolerance/ autoimmunity. Work on Aire over the last decade stands out as an example of starting with a human disease (APECED, APS-1) and exploiting organismal, cellular, molecular, genetic, and systems approaches to define a molecular mechanism (cell-type-specific loss of control of RNA polymerase pausing). Recently opened up the emerging field of immunometabolism, that is, cross-talk between the immune and metabolic systems.~~