Akiko Iwasaki

is a Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University. She is also a principal investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She was the 2023–2024 president of the American Association of Immunologists.

Biography Iwasaki was born and raised in Iga, Japan. Her father was a physicist, and her mother campaigned for women's labour rights. She has two sisters.

Iwasaki earned her doctoral degree in immunology from the University of Toronto in 1998. Iwasaki did her postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health in the lab of mucosal immunologist Brian Lee Kelsall.

Major contributions Herpes simplex virions, TEM. Herpes simplex virus is one of the many viruses Iwasaki studies. Making of a DNA vaccine. Iwasaki investigated how DNA vaccination elicit an immune response. While working on her PhD project of how DNA vaccines elicit an immune response, Iwasaki was among the first to show that antigen-presenting cells were in the blood, not the muscle. Iwasaki has developed a two-stage vaccination strategy called "prime and pull" that involves a conventional vaccine as a first step and then application of chemokines to the target tissue as a second step.

According to Google Scholar, one of her publications, "Toll-like receptor control of the adaptive immune response," has been cited over 5,300 times as of August 2023 and was published in Nature Immunology in October 2004. In January 2015, one of Iwasaki's studies was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Building on her interests in immune responses to viral infection, Iwasaki has also led research into human rhinovirus and Zika virus. She is also examining the effects of Long COVID and other syndromes that occur following acute infections.

Covid 19 and Long Covid Research

Iwasaki has become a prominent voice for public scientific literacy, regularly explaining complex immunological findings to general audiences through social media and in outlets such as Quanta Magazine, STAT News, and Yale Medicine.

Her long COVID research has included studies identifying distinctive immune and hormonal signatures associated with the condition, including reduced cortisol levels and altered T-cell activity, and later work providing evidence that autoantibodies targeting the brain and nervous system may contribute to neurological symptoms in a subset of patients, with passive transfer of patient antibodies into mice reproducing these features.

Personal life Iwasaki is well known as an advocate for women in science, including voicing support for affordable childcare. Additionally, she has spoken out in support of immigrants and their contributions to science. Iwasaki has gained a following on Twitter for her public health advice about COVID-19, advocating for social distancing early in the pandemic.

Honors Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in Biomedical Sciences, Burroughs Wellcome Fund (2000) Elected as a member of the National Academy of Medicine (2019) Seymour & Vivian Milstein Award for Excellence in Interferon & Cytokine Research, International Cytokine and Interferon Society (2019) Elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (2021) Elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2021) Appointed Sterling Professor of Immunobiology and of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology at Yale (2022) President of the American Association of Immunologists (2023–2024) Else Kröner-Fresenius Prize for Medical Research (2023) Howard Taylor Ricketts Prize, University of Chicago (2023) Dr. William E. Paul Distinguished Innovator Award (DIA), Lupus Research Alliance (2023) TIME 100 Most Influential People (2024) Included in TIME 100 Health list of most influential people in global health (2024) Forbes 50 over 50 Innovation (2024) Carnegie Corporation of New York Great Immigrants, Great Americans (2025) Keio Medical Science Prize (2025)

Publications