Committee Members

Pol Maria Rommens is currently working as a Professor and Director at the University of Medicine at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. He has completed his MD. He specializes in Orthopedics and trauma.

Dr. Ai is an Associate Professor of Pediatrics, at Harvard Medical School, Director of Basic Research at the Neonatology Division, and co-director of the Lung Biology & Immunology Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital. Dr. Ai’s research is focused on how the disruption of lung development negatively impacts lung function and the susceptibility to respiratory diseases in children. Dr. Ai is a standing member of an NHLBI study session and Review Editor for Frontiers in Pharmacology and Frontiers in Allergy.

Dr. Ai studies how the disruption of lung development by environmental and genetic factors negatively impacts long-term airway function. Leveraging a variety of experimental tools and models, Dr. Ai focuses on the disease mechanisms of childhood asthma, sudden infant death syndrome, and lung defects in congenital diaphragmic hernia. Dr. Ai’s research has revealed the critical roles of the nerves in the regulation of airway smooth muscle contractility, neuroendocrine secretion, and T-helper type 2 differentiation. In addition, Dr. Ai collaborates with Dr. Lerou in research projects that employ airway epithelial stem cells and mesenchymal stromal cells from tracheal aspirates of patients to study postnatal development and infection in human airways.

Carlos Ardavín received a Ph.D. in Immunology at the Complutense University of Madrid in 1983. He subsequently joined the University of Paris VI as a postdoctoral fellow and, in 1987, he obtained a group leader position as an Associated Professor of Cell Biology and Immunology, at the Faculty of Biology of the Complutense University.

From 1990 to 1991 he worked as an invited senior scientist in the laboratory of Ken Shortman at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne (Australia) on the origin of dendritic cells, and from 1993 to 1994 in the laboratory of Robson MacDonald and Hans Acha-Orbea at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research in Lausanne (Switzerland), on the role of dendritic cells in T cell negative selection and on B cells during infection by the mouse mammary tumor virus.

In 2004 he joined the Department of Immunology and Oncology at the National Center for Biotechnology (CNB/CSIC) as head of the Macrophage and Dendritic Cell Immunobiology Laboratory.

The research work carried out by Dr. Carlos Ardavín over the four last decades focused on the study of innate immunity, and more particularly on the immunobiology of dendritic cells, monocytes, and macrophages, which has led to the characterization of the precursors and differentiation pathways of dendritic cells (Nature, 1993; Nature, 2002; Nature Reviews Immunology; 2003), the demonstration that during in vivo infection monocytes differentiate into dendritic cells, and drive protective T cell responses (Immunity, 2007), and the characterization of the type I-interferon/IL-15 mediated activation of the monocyte-NK cell- neutrophil axis controlling the innate immunity against systemic candidiasis (Immunity, 2013; Immunity, 2017).

Dr. Carlos Ardavín research is currently focused on the response of the innate immune system of the peritoneal cavity against bacterial infections leading to septic shock and against peritoneal metastasis of colorectal tumors. Recent data from Dr. Ardavín laboratory have allowed to explain how peritoneal immune cells, free in a fluidic environment in homeostasis, control bacterial infections through the formation of mesothelium-bound dynamic aggregates, formed by macrophages, B1 cells and neutrophils dependent on extravascular coagulation-triggered fibrin polymerization, that provide a physical scaffold allowing the interaction and function of peritoneal immune cells (Immunity, 2021). These results may be central to antimicrobial immunity in other body cavities, such as the pleural cavity or brain ventricles.

Stephen R Durham is Head of the Section for Allergy and Clinical Immunology at NHLI, Imperial College, and Professor of Allergy and Respiratory Medicine at Royal Brompton Hospital London.

Professor Durham qualified from Downing College Cambridge and Guy’s Hospital London in 1976. He trained in general and respiratory medicine at Addenbrookes Hospital Cambridge, Royal Brompton Hospital, and John Radcliffe/Churchill Hospitals in Oxford, returning to NHLI as Senior lecturer in 1988. Before taking up his present position in 2004, he was Reader in Upper Respiratory Medicine.

He has studied the basic mechanisms of allergic rhinitis and asthma and the influence of treatment. This has involved the development of pharmacodynamic models of allergen challenges in the skin, nose, and lungs and studies of seasonal hay fever. A particular focus has been translational studies of allergen immunotherapy that have elucidated mechanisms of human antigen-specific tolerance and informed novel treatment approaches. He is the principal investigator for several international trials that have resulted in Europe-wide registration of an Alum-based grass pollen vaccine for injection and a sublingual grass allergen tablet, the first allergy vaccine to be registered in the UK for 35 years.

Professor Durham is the current President of the British Society for Allergy and Clinical Immunology and a member of the Immune Tolerance Network Steering Committee of the National Institutes of Health. He is the former Chair of the Research Committee of the World Allergy Organisation and a council member of Collegium Internationale Allergologicum. He has given prestigious lectures including the Dr John Salvaggio and Dr Harold Nelson Lectureships at the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, the John P McGovern Medal from the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. From the BSACI has been awarded the Jack Pepys Lectureship and William Frankland Medal for outstanding services to clinical allergy. He has written over 350 peer-reviewed articles and chapters and edited 3 books, including the popular BMJ ABC of Allergies.