Download Steven A. Porcelli, M.D.

Steven A. Porcelli, M.D.
Professor and Chair, Microbiology & Immunology
Professor, Medicine (Rheumatology)
The Murray and Evelyne Weinstock Chair in Microbiology and Immunology
Dr. Porcelli received his M.D. degree in 1984 from Yale University, and completed a medical
residency at Temple University Hospital in 1987. He was a fellow and then a junior faculty
member in the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy at Brigham and Women’s
Hospital in Boston. As a research fellow and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School in
the 1990s, he pioneered studies on the CD1 antigen presentation pathway and lipid antigen
recognition by T cells. These studies led him into the area of tuberculosis research, with a major
emphasis on antigen presentation and T cell responses in Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection.
In 2000, Dr. Porcelli was recruited to Einstein to be the Irene Diamond Associate Professor in
Immunology, and was subsequently appointed the Murray and Evelyne Weinstock Chair in
Microbiology and Immunology. Beginning in 2015, he was appointed Chair of the Department of
Microbiology and Immunology. His laboratory has focused for the past fifteen years on
uncovering the immune evasion mechanisms of M. tuberculosis with the goal of rationally
designing improved vaccines. He and colleagues at Einstein have identified genes of M.
tuberculosis that contribute to evasion of cell-mediated immunity. Dr. Porcelli and his colleagues
are using this information to create new attenuated strains of mycobacteria that will be assessed
for their potential to more effectively induce protective immunity against tuberculosis than the
existing Bacillus Calmette-Guérin vaccine. His lab is also pursuing research on the creation of
improved adjuvants for a variety of types of vaccines, and novel methods for enhancing immune
responses against cancers.
Dr. Porcelli is a fellow of the American Society for Clinical Investigation, and is the scientific
director of the Flow Cytometry Core Laboratories at Einstein.