The 2026 Heidelberger-Kabat Lecture

Alexander Rudensky, PhD

Alexander Rudensky, PhD, is chair of the Immunology Program and director of the Ludwig Center for Cancer Immunotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC). He holds the Lloyd J. Old Chair for Clinical Investigation, is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and is a tri-institutional professor at MSKCC, Rockefeller University, and Cornell University. Before joining MSKCC, he was a professor of immunology at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He received his doctorate from the Gabrichevsky Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow and completed postdoctoral training at Yale University School of Medicine under the late Charles A. Janeway Jr.

Dr. Rudensky's research focuses on immunoregulation and the differentiation of regulatory T lymphocytes and their role in immune responses. His laboratory demonstrated that the transcription factor Foxp3 serves as a Treg cell lineage-specification factor. His studies revealed the essential role these cells play in protecting against autoimmunity and maladaptive inflammation and identified key mechanisms governing their differentiation and function. His work has provided important insights into the fundamental role of regulatory T cells in immunological tolerance and in a variety of biological processes and diseases, including autoimmunity, allergy, immunity to infection, pregnancy, tissue repair and cancer.

Dr. Rudensky is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Medicine and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academy of the American Association for Cancer Research. He was named a 2023 Distinguished Fellow of the American Association of Immunologists. His honors include recognition as a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate and receipt of the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science, the Rabbi Shai Shaknai Memorial Award, the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Cancer Research Institute's Coley Award for Basic Immunology, the American Association of Immunologists Pharmingen Investigator Award, the American Association of Immunologists Meritorious Career Award, and the Searle Scholar Award.

He has served on numerous advisory and editorial boards, including those of the Cancer Research Institute, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, and Immunity. He also serves as an editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine.

About the Heidelberger-Kabat Lecture