Building on a legacy of excellence in immunology research and training—from Jonas Salk’s discovery of the polio vaccine in the 1950s to Nobel laureate Niels Jerne’s perfection of the Jerne plaque assay for counting antibody-producing cells when he chaired the Department of Microbiology from 1962 to 1966—the Department of Immunology within the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine was founded on January 1, 2002.
The department was originally housed in the Biomedical Science Tower in Oakland, where Thomas Starzl established his pioneering solid organ transplant program in 1981. Starzl’s research program made major advances in understanding the problem of graft rejection, trained numerous outstanding students and fellows, and provided resources that boosted the research enterprise of the School of Medicine.
These developments coincided with the establishment of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI; now UPMC Hillman Cancer Center) in 1984 with renowned immunologist Ronald Herberman at its helm. Under his leadership, UPCI launched a number of new research initiatives in the burgeoning fields of cancer immunology and immunotherapy, which provided important organizational structure and financial support for a seminar series, a journal club, and annual retreats. Immunology quickly became one of the largest UPCI programs as immunologists from departments across the University congregated.
Excellence in both research and training at UPCI led to a faculty initiative to organize a Graduate Training Program in Immunology (GTPI). This program was approved and given the authority to grant PhD degrees in immunology starting in the 1997–1998 academic year. Prior to this, more than 100 immunology graduate students had obtained doctorates in immunology that carried the name of other disciplines. The GTPI was later incorporated into the School of Medicine’s Interdisciplinary Biomedical Graduate Program as one of seven training programs.
While immunology research blossomed at Pitt, it finally found a home in 2002 with the creation of the Department of Immunology under the leadership of Olivera (Olja) Finn. The department started with five primary faculty but quickly grew to 12 in the next 10 years. Many outstanding young investigators and several senior immunologists were recruited to Pittsburgh through joint efforts of various departments and institutes.
Finn stepped down as chair in 2013, and Mark Shlomchik was recruited from Yale University to lead the department. Under his leadership, the department grew substantially with the hiring of 10 junior and two senior faculty, including Harinder Singh from Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, who founded the Center for Systems Immunology. Shlomchik also oversaw the creation of new core facilities for mouse genome engineering, flow cytometry, and gnotobiotic mice, and he spearheaded the development of the graduate Program in Microbiology and Immunology, a joint program between the Departments of Immunology and Microbiology & Molecular Genetics.
In 2023, Dario Vignali was named chair of the Department of Immunology as Shlomchik stepped down from the role. Under Vignali’s leadership, the department moved to The Assembly, a historic building in Shadyside that has been renovated into a 200,000-square-foot collaborative research hub with state-of-the-art lab space, conference rooms, event space, and core facilities. Vignali further grew the department by recruiting six new junior faculty.
Now comprising 30 primary faculty and over 60 secondary faculty with appointments in departments such as Medicine, Surgery, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, and Pediatrics, the department continues to expand as it fosters new immunological discoveries and trains the next generation of immunologists.
Read more about the emergence of immunology in Pittsburgh.