Ruslan M. Medzhitov, Ph.D.

Ruslan M. Medzhitov, Ph.D., assistant professor of immunobiology, has been named an assistant investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), bringing the total number of HHMI investigators at Yale to 17. HHMI, based in Chevy Chase, Md., with an endowment of $15 billion and annual budget of more than $600 million, enters into long-term research collaboration agreements with universities and other academic research organizations, where its investigators hold faculty appointments. Medzhitov’s research focuses on various aspects of innate immunity, including molecular mechanisms of innate immune recognition, control of adaptive immune responses by innate immune recognition, and mechanisms of autoimmunity and allergy. Medzhitov, originally from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, worked in the laboratory of Russell F. Doolittle at the University of California, San Diego, and received his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from Moscow University before being recruited to Yale by Charles A. Janeway Jr., M.D., in 1994. Medzhitov was among 48 scientists from 31 institutions selected as HHMI investigators in 2000.