Keynote Speaker

Diane Mathis, Ph.D.
Regulation of Auto-inflammatory Responses

Diane Mathis obtained a B.Sc. from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. She performed postdoctoral studies at the Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire des Eucaryotes in Strasbourg, France and at Stanford University Medical Center. She returned to France at the end of 1983, establishing a laboratory at the Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire in Strasbourg, in conjunction with Dr Christophe Benoist. The lab moved to the Joslin Diabetes Center at the end of 1999. Dr Mathis is currently a Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and is an Associate Research Director and Head of the Section on Immunology and Immunogenetics at Joslin, where she holds the William T. Young Chair in Diabetes Research. She is Director of the JDRF Center on Immunological Tolerance in Type-1 Diabetes at HMS, a Principle Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an Associate Faculty Member of The Broad Institute. Dr Mathis was elected to the US Academy of Sciences in 2003 and to the German Academy in 2007.

The lab works in the fields of T cell differentiation and autoimmunity, with a special emphasis on exploiting the most advanced transgenic and gene-targeting technology to engineer new mouse models. Studies on autoimmunity explore the immunological mechanisms of diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and APECED, a polyglandular autoimmune disease. Major questions tackled are what initiates these diseases, how is their progression regulated, and what are the final effector mechanisms. In addition, modern genetic and genomic approaches are used to identify disease-modifying genes in both human patients and mouse models, and the application of computational and bioinformatic strategies to these and other issues is explored. Whole-animal imaging of inflammation and its tissular effects in diabetes and arthritis models is pursued as part of a long-standing collaborative program.

The Mathis/Benoist laboratory has produced over 250 publications and trained over 100 students and postdoctoral fellows.

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